The High Court has refused an order to surrender Ladislav Ševčík to the Czech Republic, finding that one of the two offences underlying his aggregate prison sentence had no corresponding offence under Irish law.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Paul Burns on 11 November 2020, concerned a European arrest warrant seeking Ševčík’s surrender to serve a two-year sentence imposed in January 2019. The sentence covered drug trafficking and failing to enter prison to begin serving an earlier sentence. The issuing authority confirmed that it was a cumulative sentence and could not be divided between the offences.
The court found that the drug trafficking offence met the statutory requirements for surrender without proof of correspondence. The dispute concerned the second offence: the warrant alleged that Ševčík failed to report to prison in November 2017 after receiving and acknowledging an order to begin serving a 12-month sentence.
The Minister for Justice argued that this conduct corresponded to criminal contempt of court or, alternatively, perverting the course of justice. The respondent’s position was that Irish law had no matching offence, including because Irish procedure does not require a sentenced person to report to prison on a future date.
Justice Burns found no correspondence with criminal contempt. A failure to honour an obligation to a court would not, by itself, amount to contempt unless it represented an affront or defiance that endangered the administration of justice or public confidence in it. The conduct described in the warrant did not meet that threshold.
The court also rejected the proposed correspondence with perverting the course of justice. It held that the common law offence requires a positive act and that mere inaction is insufficient. The warrant alleged only a failure to enter prison; it did not allege that Ševčík fled the Czech Republic to avoid doing so. The court therefore found no correspondence with that offence either.
Ševčík had also objected that his fair trial rights were breached because he lacked legal representation. The issuing authority’s reply said he had been informed of his rights, received a court-appointed lawyer free of charge, and could later choose a lawyer and apply for legal aid. The court found the respondent had not produced cogent or compelling evidence to displace the statutory presumption that the issuing state complied with the relevant requirements, and dismissed that objection.
Because the two-year sentence was aggregate and could not be apportioned, the court could not order surrender for the drug offence alone. It concluded that surrender was precluded and ordered that it be refused.