The High Court has ruled that a man sought by Poland for the remaining part of an aggregate prison sentence may be surrendered, rejecting objections based on double jeopardy, abuse of process and the correspondence of two document-hiding offences with Irish law.
In a judgment delivered on 19 June 2017, Ms Justice Donnelly considered a European arrest warrant issued on 27 November 2014. It sought the surrender of Piotr Stawera to serve three years, four months and 29 days remaining from an aggregate sentence of five years and five months for 22 offences.
Twenty of the offences were designated in the warrant as specified categories, including fraud and forgery, for which the court said Irish-law correspondence did not need to be shown. For two offences, the warrant alleged that Mr Stawera hid identity documents in his apartment in Wrzesnia, Poland. The court considered whether those acts would amount to theft in Ireland, as required for surrender on those offences.
The issuing judicial authority said the Polish court had found that the documents belonged solely to other people, who were entitled to use them, and that Mr Stawera hid them where the owners could not access or locate them. The Polish authorities had been unable to establish how he obtained the documents. One owner had probably lost theirs; the other was not questioned about the circumstances.
The judge held that the Polish court’s findings implied that Mr Stawera had dishonestly interfered with the owners’ property rights, without their consent and with the intention of depriving them of the documents. She said those findings, if established in Ireland, would amount to theft. The High Court was assessing correspondence for surrender purposes, not deciding guilt under Irish law.
Mr Stawera had previously been surrendered to Poland in 2010 in relation to one of the offences, Offence XXII, and had served time under a two-year sentence. The court found that under Polish law the earlier sentence was not a final judgment because it was later included in an aggregate sentence. It therefore rejected the objection under section 41 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
The court also rejected the abuse-of-process argument. It noted that the time already spent in custody had been credited and that aggregation had reduced the overall sentence. It found that the requirements concerning trial in the respondent’s absence under section 45 were met, including through information supplied after the warrant was issued.
The court concluded that surrender was not prohibited under the provisions considered and said it could make an order for Mr Stawera’s surrender to a person authorised by Poland to receive him.