The white supremacist who killed 51 Muslims at two Christchurch mosques lost an attempt to undo his guilty pleas in a Court of Appeal ruling Thursday.
A three-judge panel dismissed Brenton Tarrant’s claim that harsh prison conditions forced him to admit to terrorism, murder and attempted murder charges. They said his bid to withdraw the pleas and seek a trial was “utterly devoid of merit.”
Tarrant, an Australian now aged 35, killed 51 worshippers and injured dozens more in March 2019 when he drove to two Christchurch mosques and opened fire with semiautomatic weapons during Friday prayers. His guilty pleas in March 2020 had brought relief to bereaved families and survivors who feared he would use a public trial to publicize his views.
The dismissal appears to end the possibility of a trial. Lawyers for some victims, who included men, women and children as young as three, had said the prospect of a trial would be “unimaginably traumatic.”
The court noted Tarrant filed his bid 505 days after the legal deadline and “failed by a considerable margin to adequately explain the extraordinarily long delay.”
At the five-day hearing in February, Tarrant argued his admissions were the result of “irrationality” from poor mental health that temporarily caused him to abandon his racist beliefs. The judges rejected this, finding claims of mental illness were not supported by prison staff, mental health professionals or his earlier lawyers. They said he did not meet the legal definition of being unfit to plead guilty, a point he had conceded.
“He 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,” the judges wrote, adding they believed he had attempted to mislead the court about his state of mind to advance an appeal.
The court also revealed Tarrant sought to abandon his appeal shortly after making his case in February; the judges rejected that bid too, saying the matter was of “significant public interest and should be finally determined.” They suggested he “began 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 does not automatically allow an appellant to quit an appeal once it is under way.
Tarrant had complained of prison conditions, saying he was kept apart from other prisoners, had little to occupy him and was constantly surveilled. The judges concluded his isolation was necessary because he was at risk of suicide or self-harm and that monitoring was for his welfare, not to torment him. They found he was not coerced or pressured into pleading guilty.
The court noted Tarrant had rejected his lawyers’ offer to try to negotiate away the terrorism charge because he wanted to be recognized as a terrorist.
Tarrant remains in Auckland Prison, where in August 2020 he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The judges allowed him to abandon an appeal of that sentence, which had been scheduled for hearing later in 2026.
The killer was radicalised online and moved to New Zealand in 2017 with a plan to carry out a mass shooting. He built a cache of weapons and scouted his targets before the attack. His previous lawyers told the appeals court that he had wanted to defend his actions at trial as protecting New Zealand from immigrants — a defence not available under New Zealand law, which the judges said likely influenced his decision to plead guilty.
The judges said Tarrant did not dispute the overwhelming facts against him or identify any legitimate defence he could have mounted at trial. Evidence included footage he filmed and livestreamed of the attack that showed his face, and a document setting out his racist views that he published online under his real name before the attacks.
