Extradition appeal allowed: district judge’s ‘unsupportable’ order overturned
The High Court has overturned an order for the extradition of a man, represented by Malcolm Hawkes, to Slovakia to serve a sentence of one-year’s imprisonment. The Appellant had been arrested for an offence of driving while disqualified in December 2010. However, his conviction and sentence, both in his absence, were not finalised until April 2014.
By the time of his extradition arrest in 2024, the Appellant was living in the UK, married with four children aged under 10 and in full-time employment. The Appellant’s Czech wife was not entitled to state benefits and relied entirely on her husband’s income. The shock of his arrest caused her to miscarry the twins she was expecting while the Appellant was fired from his job at a car wash.
The court agreed that, for such an aged offence, not involving any violence, injury or damage to property that, in equivalent circumstances in this jurisdiction, it would be ‘wholly improbable’ that a court here would impose a 12-month prison sentence. [37]
The High Court also held that the district judge had failed to conduct the Article 8 ‘balancing exercise’ properly; she was wrong to limit consideration of the impact to merely financial, and wrong to suppose that the Appellant’s wife and four children could simply relocate to Slovakia or Czechia, where they had nowhere to live or any evidence of support. [38]
The Court criticised the district judge’s failure properly to consider the Appellant’s evidence, focusing instead on the question of fugitivity at the cost of ignoring the very real impact on the blameless children. She did not ‘properly seek to investigate the balance between the offending, supporting the extradition, and the deleterious effects it would have on the children and partner.’ The Court found the district judge ‘did not examine the gravity of the offence and therefore, afford to it appropriate weight when considering the interests in extradition.’ [39]
Citing the approach of Lord Neuburger in the Supreme Court case of Re (B) [2013] UK SC 33 at [93] and the range of seven conclusions open to an appellate court when considering a lower court’s judgment, Foster J concluded that this case fell into the seventh range and found ‘the District Judge’s conclusion on proportionality was appealably wrong, indeed it was with a view which is unsupportable.’ [41]
In Karicka v Slovakia [2025] EWHC 1234 (Admin), Malcolm was instructed by James Achillea and Noam Almaz, of Stokoe Partnership Solicitors.
