The Supreme Court has allowed the Minister for Justice and Equality’s appeal and ordered that a man may be surrendered to Lithuania under a European Arrest Warrant. It held that the High Court had applied the wrong legal test when it refused surrender on the basis of the man’s private and family life in Ireland.
The appeal concerned a warrant seeking the respondent’s return to serve the balance of a Lithuanian sentence after his parole was revoked. The Supreme Court said Irish courts must consider whether surrender would be incompatible with Ireland’s obligations under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but cannot apply a general proportionality test weighing private circumstances against the public interest in surrender.
The court said the Article 8 defence requires clear, cogent evidence of circumstances that are truly exceptional and sufficient to make surrender incompatible with the Convention. The statutory framework presumes that the issuing state will comply with the European Arrest Warrant system unless the contrary is shown.
The High Court had relied on the respondent’s family life in Ireland, the children’s young ages, delay in the warrant process and other circumstances. The Supreme Court accepted that there had been significant periods of delay and said the information provided by Lithuanian authorities was insufficient to explain them. But delay alone could not justify refusing surrender, and the evidence about the family’s circumstances fell far short of the exceptional evidence in an earlier case, Minister for Justice v J.A.T. (No. 2).
The court also held that the Irish court could not assess the gravity of the parole breach, whether the respondent had been rehabilitated, or the fact that he would return to serve the remainder of a part-served sentence. Those matters, it said, were for the Lithuanian courts. The warrant stated that after surrender the respondent would be informed of a right to seek a retrial or appeal, with an opportunity to present fresh evidence, and of avenues to seek review of the penalty.
The Supreme Court concluded that there was no evidence the respondent would be prevented from raising relevant circumstances before the Lithuanian courts. It allowed the appeal and made an order that he may be surrendered to Lithuania. The judgment was delivered on 2 April 2020.