The High Court has ordered the surrender of Tomasz Krzysztof Skwierczynski to Poland to serve the remaining five months and 28 days of a six-month sentence for attempting to steal a hammer drill in 2007.
In a judgment delivered on 24 October 2016, Ms Justice Donnelly found that none of the respondent’s objections prohibited surrender under the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The warrant sought his return to serve a sentence imposed by the District Court of Gdansk-South on 6 August 2007. The offence concerned an attempt to take a hammer drill from an open Mercedes in Gdansk on 22 February that year. The warrant said the attempt was stopped by employees of a business and was intended to misappropriate the drill.
The respondent argued that the alleged conduct did not correspond to attempted theft under Irish law, including because the drill’s owner was not identified. The judge found the warrant’s description sufficient to establish correspondence with attempted theft: it described a dishonest attempt to take the drill, to the detriment of the business. She said the question was correspondence between offences, not proof of the offence itself.
He also challenged a difference between the judge named as the issuing court’s representative in one part of the warrant and the judge who signed it. The court found that the Regional Court in Gdansk was clearly identified as the issuing judicial authority and treated any discrepancy as an insubstantial defect that caused no injustice.
The most contested issue concerned the respondent’s absence from the 2007 trial. The warrant said a summons had been received by his brother at the respondent’s stated address, but the court found no evidence that the brother passed it on or when. It therefore held that the warrant did not establish that the respondent actually received official notice of the trial date under that route.
However, further information from the Polish authority said the respondent had received the judgment in person and appealed. The judge accepted that the appeal was lodged and dismissed, and concluded that the respondent’s defence rights had been respected. Although the circumstances did not fit the listed conditions in section 45 in a strict sense, she interpreted the section as permitting surrender where the court was assured that defence rights had not been breached.
The respondent also argued that surrender would disproportionately interfere with his private life, citing delay, his work in Ireland and his personal circumstances. The judge found the public interest in enforcing the sentence remained moderate and that the evidence did not show particularly harmful consequences that would make surrender disproportionate under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court rejected the objections and ordered surrender to a person authorised by Poland to receive him. The judgment records that the court could make the order; it does not establish from this source whether surrender was subsequently carried out.