The Court of Appeal ruled that a failure to attend court after accepting attendance as a condition of bail in Scotland would correspond to an offence under section 13 of Ireland’s Criminal Justice Act 1984, but would not amount to common law criminal contempt here.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Peart on 24 February 2016, answered a question certified by the High Court as being of exceptional public importance. The issue was whether failing to attend court under conditional release corresponded to an Irish offence, “in particular to criminal contempt of court”.
The case concerned a European arrest warrant seeking the surrender of Pablo Tellarini Prieto to Scotland. He had been charged there with assault and released on bail subject to conditions, including appearing at court when required. He did not attend a procedural hearing on 7 January 2014, although his solicitor was present. A warrant was issued after no reasonable excuse was offered. The High Court had also considered a separate allegation about failure to sign on, but found no corresponding Irish offence; that conclusion was not appealed.
The High Court ordered surrender for the assault and failure-to-appear offences. It found the latter corresponded to criminal contempt of court, but not to section 13 of the 1984 Act because the Scottish bail arrangement did not include an Irish-style monetary recognisance. The appellant challenged the contempt conclusion.
The Court of Appeal rejected both sides’ proposed treatment of the failure to appear as contempt. It said breach of a bail condition to attend court was qualitatively different from conduct historically treated as contempt, such as disrupting proceedings or obstructing a witness. The court concluded that the failure to attend, even without reasonable excuse, was not a common law offence of contempt in Ireland.
On section 13, the court said the correspondence test focuses on the alleged acts and omissions, rather than whether the Scottish offence has the same elements or label as the Irish offence. It relied on information from the Scottish authority that bail had been granted on the appellant’s acceptance of the attendance condition. The relevant conduct was that he undertook to attend when required and then failed to do so. The court held that an equivalent commitment and breach in Ireland would constitute the section 13 offence. It clarified that this was a correspondence decision for surrender proceedings, not a ruling on what evidence would be needed to prove a section 13 charge at trial.
The court answered the certified question accordingly: the failure to appear corresponded to the section 13 offence, but not to criminal contempt. It held that the surrender order should stand for the assault and failure-to-appear offences, and that surrender on those offences was not prohibited.