Greece v Governor of Brixton Prison (ex parte Kotronis)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Reid,Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest,Lord Guest,Lord Upjohn,Lord Donovan |
| Judgment Date | 05 November 1969 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1969] UKHL J1105-1 |
| Date | 05 November 1969 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1969] UKHL J1105-1
House of Lords
Lord Reid
Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest
Lord Guest
Lord Upjohn
Lord Donovan
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Royal Government of Greece against Governor of Brixton Prison and others (on Appeal from a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division), that the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Tuesday the 21st, as on Wednesday the 22d and Thursday the 23d, days of October last, upon the Petition and Appeal of the Royal Government of Greece, The Greek Embassy, 51 Upper Brook Street, London, W.l, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice of the 30th of July 1969, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied or altered, or that the Petitioners might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, might seem meet; and Counsel having been heard on behalf of the Governor of Brixton Prison, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Christos Kotronis (Assisted Person), the Respondents in the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, of the 30th day of July 1969, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Reversed, and that the Order of the Metropolitan Magistrate, of the 15th day of July 1969, be, and the same is hereby, Restored: And it is further Ordered, That there be no Order as to Costs of the Appeal to this House: And it is further Ordered, That the Costs incurred by the Third Respondent in the Divisional Court, and also the Costs incurred by him in respect of the said Appeal to this House, be taxed in accordance with the provisions of the Third Schedule to the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949, as amended by the Legal Aid Act 1960: And it is also further Ordered, That the Cause be, and the same is hereby, remitted back to a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, to do therein as shall be just and consistent with this Judgment.
My Lords,
The Respondent Kotronis is a Greek national who was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment by a Greek Court in 1966 for having obtained money by false pretences in Greece in 1965. He left Greece shortly after the date of the offence and he was tried in his absence. Greek law permits trial as if the accused was present provided that there has been what is called "substituted service". In this case there was substituted service but there is some doubt whether this was done strictly in accordance with the requirements of Greek law. It is not disputed that in fact Kotronis did not know of this charge before the trial and so had no opportunity to defend himself. He says that he only learnt of these proceedings in 1968 when he was in England.
He was arrested in England on 14th April, 1969, on a Bow Street Magistrate's warrant and on 12th May the Secretary of State, having received a Requisition from the Greek Government who are the Appellants in this case, required the Magistrate to proceed under the Extradition Act, 1870. Committal proceedings took place on seven days, spread out between 25th May and 15th July and on the latter date the Magistrate committed Kotronis to Brixton Prison. He immediately applied for a Writ of Habeas Corpus and the case was heard by a Divisional Court on 28th, 29th and 30th July. On 30th July that Court by a majority (Waller and O'Connor, J.J., Lord Parker, L.C.J., dissenting) found in his favour, ordered his discharge on bail and granted leave to appeal.
The Appellants maintain that the decision of the Divisional Court was wrong. The matter depends on the true meaning and effect of section 10 of the Extradition Act.
In this case there were before the Magistrate a duly authenticated copy of the judgment of the Greek Court, evidence that Kotronis was the person convicted, and the crime set out in that judgment is an extradition crime. The Appellants maintain that the Magistrate was not entitled to consider the validity of that judgment. But Kotronis maintains that he is entitled to shew that that judgment must be regarded by our Courts as a nullity because it was contrary to natural justice to condemn a man who had had no opportunity to appear and defend himself. Counsel for the Respondent, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, supported the Appellants' contention. He drew attention to the fact that the Secretary of State has an unfettered discretion whether or not to surrender a fugitive criminal who has been committed by a Magistrate, and submitted that the question whether there has been a denial of natural justice is one of the matters which the Secretary of State has to consider in deciding whether it would be improper or unjust to surrender the fugitive criminal.
This very question was considered by this House in the very recent case of Atkinson v. The Government of the United States. Before making my speech in that case I considered all the arguments put forward in the present case, and the opinion for which I there gave reasons is equally applicable to the present case. So I shall not repeat what I said in Atkinson's case and I shall only deal with new arguments submitted in the present case.
First I mention an argument for the Appellants to which I have given no weight. It was said, no doubt truly, that it would impede or delay extradition proceedings if the fugitive criminal were entitled to question the validity of the conviction on the ground that it had been preceded by something which amounted to an infringement of natural justice. But in construing a provision relating to the liberty of the subject I would not attach importance to administrative inconvenience.
For the Respondent Kotronis it was argued that it is well established that our Courts when asked to apply a foreign civil judgment will have regard to any denial of natural justice, so a fortiori we must do that in a criminal case. That would be a strong argument if it were contended that there is no means by which a fugitive criminal can raise that matter. But here the real question is whether it is for the Court or for the Secretary of State to deal with the matter, so I do not think that this argument has much force.
Then it was said that, if the Appellants are right, that necessarily involves the proposition that the certificate of conviction put before the Magistrate is conclusive evidence, and that for various reasons that cannot be so. I do not think that that is right. The certificate is evidence, and, if not contradicted by other evidence, sufficient evidence that the man was in fact convicted. It appears to me to be open to the man to prove that in fact he never was convicted. But it is one thing to say he was never convicted and quite another thing to say that the law regards his conviction as a nullity. In most cases a party is entitled to show that a decision against him was in law a nullity. But if one holds that the question of denial of natural justice is not for the Court, that must mean that the Court is not entitled to enquire whether a foreign conviction is a nullity by reason of denial of natural...
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