The High Court has refused an application to surrender a man to Latvia, finding that his rights under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act were not adequately protected before a Latvian court converted police supervision into a prison term.
The Minister for Justice and Equality sought his surrender under a European Arrest Warrant to enforce a sentence of one year and one day. The Latvian sentence followed a decision by the Zemgale District Court on 19 August 2020, which converted the unserved part of a three-year police-supervision term into imprisonment. The man was not present at that hearing.
The respondent argued that surrender was prohibited because he had not appeared at the proceedings resulting in the sentence. He said he knew he had to report to a police station after his release from prison but had not been told that breaching the supervision could lead to custody. The Minister argued that the 2020 hearing was an execution decision outside the in-absentia protections, and alternatively that the respondent had waived his right to attend.
Justice Caroline Biggs said the conversion did not technically change the nature or amount of the original sentence and was based on a mathematical calculation. She therefore found that the 2020 hearing was not a “trial resulting in the decision” for the purposes of Article 4a of the EU Framework Decision or section 45.
However, the judge also found that the respondent had not unequivocally waived his right to attend. The evidence did not establish that he knew a further court hearing was pending, or that he knew its date and place and the consequences of not attending.
The Latvian authorities confirmed that the respondent had been told to report to a named police station and that failure to do so could result in administrative fines. They said the case file contained no documents showing he had been told that police supervision could be replaced by imprisonment. The judge found that he had not been informed that a further hearing could lead to a loss of liberty, and noted that he had no right to appeal the conversion decision.
Considering the whole process, Justice Biggs concluded that the respondent’s section 45 rights had been breached. She held that the Act’s requirements had not been met and refused the application for surrender. The ruling concerns the surrender application; it does not set aside the Latvian sentence-conversion decision.