In a decisive ruling, New Zealand’s Court of Appeal has dismissed Brenton Tarrant’s attempt to revoke his guilty pleas, a move he claimed was due to the harsh conditions of his imprisonment. The panel of three judges found his argument to be “utterly devoid of merit,” effectively shutting down his bid to retract his admissions.
Brenton Tarrant, who is now 35 years old, carried out a horrific attack in March 2019, taking the lives of 51 worshippers and injuring many others. Armed with semi-automatic weapons, he targeted two mosques in Christchurch during Friday prayers, leaving a deep scar on the community.
In March 2020, Tarrant pleaded guilty to charges of terrorism, murder, and attempted murder. This decision was met with relief by the families and survivors of the victims, who were spared the ordeal of a protracted trial. They had feared that such a trial might have given Tarrant a platform to propagate his extremist ideology.
Subsequently, Tarrant was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, reflecting the gravity of his crimes. His recent appeal attempt, filed a staggering 505 days past the legal deadline, has now been conclusively denied, thus preventing any chance of the case being reopened in court.
He was sentenced to life without parole on the murder, attempted murder and terrorism offences.
The rejection of his appeal bid â which the court noted was made 505 days after the legal deadline for it to be filed â means such a trial has once again been averted.
His claim of mental illness was rejected
At the court’s five-day hearing in February, the attacker argued his admissions of guilt were provoked by âirrationalityâ induced by poor mental health, which led him to desert his racist views for a time.
The judges concluded, however, that his claims of mental illness were inconsistent and werenât supported by prison staff, mental health professionals or lawyers who had earlier represented him.
âHe was not suffering from a mental impairment or any other form of mental incapacity which rendered him unable to voluntarily change his pleas to guilty,â the judges wrote in today’s ruling.
âHe endeavoured to mislead us about his state of mind in a weak attempt to advance an appeal in circumstances where all other evidence demonstrated that he made an informed and totally rational decision to plead guilty.â
The court’s ruling also revealed that Tarrant sought to abandon his appeal shortly after making his case at the hearing in February.
The judges rejected that bid too, writing that the case was âof significant public interest and should be finally determined”.
They suggested that Tarrant âbegan to form the opinion that the hearing was not proceeding in his favour, and as a result decided to file a notice of abandonment after the hearing concluded”.
New Zealand law doesnât require judges to allow an appellant to quit an appeal bid once itâs underway.
He will remain in jail for life
Tarrant, who has since fired the lawyers acting for him in February, remains in Auckland Prison, where he was sentenced in August 2020 to spend life in prison without the chance of parole.
The judges allowed him to abandon his appeal to that sentence, which was scheduled to be heard later in 2026.
The Australian-born man moved to New Zealand in 2017 with a plan to commit a mass shooting.
He amassed a cache of weapons and made a reconnaissance trip to the sites of his planned crimes before the attack.
The appeal court judges wrote that Tarrant had accepted the summary of facts presented to him by the police and the sentencing judge and noted that the case against him was âoverwhelming.â
Evidence included footage of the attack that the shooter filmed himself and livestreamed on the internet, in which he showed his own face, and a document outlining his racist views that he published online before the attacks under his real name.
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