The High Court ruled that fingerprint evidence could be admitted at an arrest hearing under the European Arrest Warrant Act after accepting hearsay evidence that the prints had been sent on behalf of the Italian judicial authority. It then found that the man before it was the person named in the warrant, for the purposes of that hearing only.
The ruling concerned a European arrest warrant seeking the surrender of Yemi Moshood Olatunde to serve a prison sentence imposed by a court in Naples. The man arrested in Ireland said his name was Roy Andrew Yemi Aro and denied being the person named in the warrant. He also disputed the admissibility of fingerprint impressions supplied through an Interpol Diffusion, arguing they were hearsay.
Garda evidence was that fingerprints taken from the arrested man at Tallaght Garda Station were compared with prints attached to the Diffusion and found to be a complete match. The central dispute was whether those prints had been transmitted “by or on behalf of” the issuing judicial authority, as required for them to be received without further proof under section 45A(11) of the 2003 Act.
The Minister’s Department witness, Barry Crossan, recounted a telephone conversation and produced communications from Italian officials. An Interpol Rome lieutenant’s written communication said the identification material had been sent on behalf of the Italian central authority and the Public Prosecutor’s office at the Court of Naples. The respondent objected that these accounts and documents were hearsay.
Mr Justice Edwards held that hearsay could be admitted in principle at an urgent, interlocutory arrest hearing where it concerned a subsidiary issue, the statutory time limits impeded obtaining direct evidence, and admitting it was in the interests of justice. He accepted the evidence about who had sent the fingerprints. The court therefore ruled section 45A(11) applied and that the fingerprint evidence could be received without further proof.
The judge concluded that the fingerprint match satisfied the court that the arrested man was the person named in the warrant. That determination applied only to the section 13(5) procedure. It did not decide identity for the rest of the case: the respondent could raise the issue again at any later surrender hearing under section 16. The judgment records no surrender order.