The High Court refused an application to surrender P.W. to Poland under a European arrest warrant, finding that the impact on his family life during the final months of his life outweighed the public interest in enforcing his sentence.
The warrant was issued in Bydgoszcz on 5 June 2018. It concerned the activation of a ten-month prison sentence imposed in 2009 after P.W. failed to attend a hearing in 2007. The sentence had been suspended for four years under probation supervision. The judgment says P.W. had agreed to the sentence and had been warned it could be activated if he failed to meet the conditions.
Justice Alexander Owens said P.W. had not supported his claims about inhumane prison conditions or inadequate medical facilities with evidence. The judge also rejected delay, by itself, as a sufficient reason to resist surrender. P.W. had not established an identified default by Polish authorities or another relevant basis, such as abuse of process. The court noted that he had made himself unavailable to proceedings and that authorities in Bydgoszcz were not shown to have known he was in Ireland at the time of the proceedings that led to his return to Poland in 2016.
The court then considered medical evidence that was not disputed. A consultant described P.W. as having decompensated liver cirrhosis, severe jaundice, fluid in the abdomen, encephalopathy, severe leg ulceration, an umbilical hernia and diabetes. He was not fit to travel, had a terminal prognosis and was unlikely to live a year.
The judgment said surrender was likely to cause further medical complications and shorten his life expectancy. P.W. had no family in Poland who could visit him; his family, including his son, were in Ireland. The court considered that surrender would disrupt their family life during what were likely to be his remaining months.
Applying the Article 8 family-life balance, the judge concluded that the case did not justify surrender. The underlying offence concerned a bogus certificate issued in 2005, claiming that a bricklayer and plasterer was employed by P.W.’s company. The court refused surrender to enforce the activated sentence. It did not determine a prosecution or sentence for that underlying offence in Ireland.