The Supreme Court has upheld the High Court and Court of Appeal decisions refusing Eric Eoin Marques’s challenge to his extradition to the United States, finding that the Minister for Justice gave adequate reasons for ordering surrender.
In a judgment delivered on 20 March 2019, Mr Justice Peter Charleton said the Minister retained discretion to refuse extradition under section 15(2) of the Extradition Act 1965, even after the courts had allowed the extradition process to proceed. The discretion belonged to the Minister as part of the State’s role in international relations; it did not give a person facing extradition an individual right not to be surrendered.
The court also ruled that the Minister was not required to ask the Director of Public Prosecutions why she had decided not to prosecute Marques in Ireland. The DPP had declined to prosecute despite Marques offering to plead guilty to at least some potential domestic charges. The judgment said the Minister’s separate function could be exercised without knowing the reasons for that decision.
Marques was arrested in Dublin in August 2013 following a US extradition request. The allegation was that he had operated an online site from Dublin facilitating access to pornographic images involving children. The judgment records that he remained in custody after bail was refused and that the Minister signed an order directing his surrender on 1 June 2017.
The day before, Marques’s solicitor had asked the Minister not to make the order, raising the unexplained decision not to prosecute and humanitarian concerns, including a claimed developmental disorder. The Minister replied on 2 June that the Tánaiste had considered the issues raised, regarded it as neither necessary nor appropriate to seek an explanation from the independent DPP, and had taken account of earlier court decisions.
The Supreme Court found those reasons adequate in the context of the case and the preceding court proceedings. It noted that the Minister could take a different view from the courts on whether surrender should proceed, but was entitled to conclude that the solicitor’s letter did not justify refusing it.
The court dismissed the appeal and upheld the orders below. It did not decide whether Marques was guilty of any offence; the appeal concerned the Minister’s extradition decision and the legal scope of the Minister’s discretion.