Brenton Tarrant, the Australian white supremacist convicted of killing 51 Muslim worshippers in the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, has appeared in New Zealand’s Court of Appeal seeking to overturn his previous guilty pleas and appeal his convictions and sentence.
Tarrant, now 35, is currently serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole — the first such sentence ever imposed in New Zealand — after pleading guilty in 2020 to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder, and one count of terrorism over the horrifying attacks at two Christchurch mosques.
In hearings held in Wellington, Tarrant argued that harsh prison conditions and severe solitary confinement adversely affected his mental health, making him irrational and therefore incapable of making a voluntary, informed guilty plea at the time.
He claimed that his mental state deteriorated while awaiting trial, and that he felt “nervous exhaustion” and pressure to plead guilty, saying he was not in the right frame of mind to make such a decision.
Crown prosecutors have challenged these assertions, pointing out that Tarrant had access to legal counsel and other options at the time of his original plea, and that there is little evidence he suffered from serious mental illness at that stage.
The Court of Appeal is now considering whether Tarrant was mentally capable of consenting to the plea. If the court accepts his arguments, the case could be sent back to the High Court for a full trial. If not, a separate hearing could later address his attempt to appeal the severity of his sentence.
The appeal hearing is scheduled to continue for several days, with victims’ families and the wider public watching closely.
