The terrorist who killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques claims he was mentally unwell and “irrational” when he pleaded guilty to his crimes.
Brenton Tarrant is currently giving evidence in the Court of Appeal as part of an attempt to get those pleas overturned.
He is currently serving a life sentence without parole for New Zealand’s worst mass killing.
He pleaded guilty in 2020 to 51 charges of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one charge of committing a terrorist act.
Wearing a white collared shirt, in glasses with a shaved head, his Australian accent could be heard echoing across the court room in Wellington for hours this morning.
Why the Christchurch terrorist is now seeking to withdraw his guilty plea - Watch on TVNZ+
The man responsible for the worst act of terrorism in NZ history is seeking leave to appeal his convictions that were entered five years ago. (Source: 1News)
He could also be heard in Christchurch, where a live stream was relayed to survivors of his attack and family members of those murdered on March 15, 2019.
Some of those watching have spent years recovering from their injuries, suffered when the killer opened fire with semi-automatic firearms and with a GoPro camera strapped to his forehead.
This morning, he tried to convince the three justices in the Court of Appeal that his mental health was “wildly fluctuating” when he entered his guilty pleas just over a year later.
His central argument is that he was incapable of making rational decisions when he entered the pleas due to the conditions in jail, which he says were "torturous and inhumane".
Facing cross-examination from Crown lawyer Barnaby Hawes, Tarrant claimed one of the biggest issues impacting his mental health was a “lack of reading material”.
He said he also struggled with isolation in prison. He claimed he read an average of three books a week and repeatedly made complaints about wanting more, both verbally and in writing.
The terrorist, who executed many of his victims at point blank range, accused the guards of playing “mental games”.
“They kept saying they couldn’t hear me,” he said. “They would say 'we don’t know what you’re saying, we can’t understand'.”
“I would yell and they would say, ‘no we still don’t get it'.”
Tarrant also said his mental health deteriorated over time in isolation, with the visits from his lawyers becoming “probably the best time of the month for me”.
He had claimed, in an affidavit to the court, that he was “near psychotic” when the pleas were entered, but walked back on that following questioning from Hawes.
He admitted he had not been hallucinating and said he had not understood the definition at the time of writing.
However, the terrorist claimed there were outward signs of his mental distress including “twitching” and “kicking”, but he had tried to mask these.
He said he was worried news of his mental state would “leak out”.
Hawes pushed him for evidence of this and, under cross, Tarrant accepted he was observed closely by Corrections staff due to being assessed as a risk of self-harm. He agreed they kept detailed notes. He agreed a multi-disciplinary team also met to monitor his well-being. Daily updates were sent with reports looking at things his sleep, mood and behaviour.
Hawes then said he would cut to the chase, asking Tarrant “if the dramatic outward signs were occurring, you would expect them to show up in notes?”
“No because they wouldn’t want to incriminate themselves,” Tarrant replied.
“They’re not fools.”
In repeated questioning, Hawes pointed to various mental health assessments and reports from professionals that found Tarrant was not suffering mental health issues, and was fit to plead and be sentenced.
Tarrant noted that one of the reports said he was enduring “traumatic stress, severe anxiety and depression”.
The Crown lawyer also pointed out, over extended questioning, that various lawyers assigned to Tarrant or working for him said they had no concern about his ability to instruct them or understand what was happening.
The terrorist accepted that he understood what he was being told but argued the prison conditions were not humane, and he felt “forced” to plead guilty.
He claimed his lawyers had expressed concern about his state of mind privately to him in meetings in prison.
“They’ve said, ‘you’ve changed, you’re not speaking the way you normally do’,” he said. “They were quite concerned because I was different, and different in look.”
He said he had initially intended to plead guilty at an earlier stage, just a few months after the shooting, but “stopped himself” when he was given a book to read.
“It was a decision induced by the conditions, rather than a decision I rationally made,” he said.
“The prison conditions were making me irrational and I was like 'okay, it’s nothing to do with changing beliefs, it’s the prison conditions that are doing this'.”
He said when he did finally decided to plead guilty in March 2020, his mental state was “wildly fluctuating”.
“My lawyers were not wanting to run the defence I wanted to run,” he said.
“If I were to represent myself in court I might make a fool of myself, by twitching, shaking.”
This left him feeling like he had no choice but to plead guilty, he said.
“I wasn’t sure what I believed, I wasn’t sure about my thoughts, which thoughts were rational and which thoughts weren’t rational.”
However, under questioning from Hawes, the terrorist accepted his lawyers gave him other options including seeking an adjournment of any trial.
“That’s probably what I should have done in hindsight,” he said.
He accepted that “no one told me I had to plead guilty”.
Tarrant also claimed he waited as long as possible to enter his plea to “damage the state”.
He entered the guilty plea on March 26, 2020, in the Christchurch High Court via audio-visual link from Auckland Prison. New Zealand was in a national lockdown for Covid-19.
“Covid-19 kicked off and I realised if I timed it correctly I could catch them off guard by doing the unexpected and not let the press build it up to any sort of victory for themselves,” he said.
Asked who “them” was, he replied: “The state and the media”.
Asked whether he had been given detailed written advice before he entered his plea, he replied “I’ll assume so”.
He said the same when asked if the information was read to him, and he signed it.
Hawes said the key word in his affidavit was “decided”, saying “you decided to plead guilty”.
Tarrant replied “there was nothing else I could do”.
“If I thought I had another option, I would have taken the other option.”
Hawes put it to him that pleading guilty was a “rational thing to do”.
“I do not believe that pleading guilty is a rational thing to do in my circumstances, I would rather go to trial and defend myself,” he replied.
Clinical psychologist's view of terrorist's mental impairment
A clinical psychologist who assessed the Christchurch terrorist has supported the killer’s claim he was suffering from mental health impairment brought on by solitary confinement in prison, when he pleaded guilty to killing 51 people.
The expert who appeared before the Court of Appeal today had name suppression, and was referred to only as “Witness B”. In a livestream shown to families of survivors in Christchurch, his image was removed and his voice was put through a disguiser so it could not be recognised.
The qualified clinical psychologist carried out three hours of interviews during two sessions ahead of the appeal hearing and reviewed other material.
During cross examination, it became clear that Witness B believed Tarrant had suffered from a "mental health impairment". The witness said he concluded “emotional judgement” and “ability to make informed choices” were impacted at the time he chose to plead guilty.
This was due, the expert felt, to him being held in solitary confinement.
Later, he said that the conditions in solitary confinement were “onerous” and would impact on anyone’s mental health.
However, in cross examination from Crown lawyer Barnaby Hawes, the psychiatrist acknowledged various limitations on his professional opinion.
Hawes questioned how the psychologist knew various facts, suggesting he had relied what he was told in the interviews – at times without corroboration.
“I have accepted Mr Tarrant’s version of events, that’s true, I have,” the witness replied.
Later, Hawes asked the witness if he was really acting as advocate rather than as an expert.
“I don’t think I just acted as an advocate, but I did draw a conclusion based on his version of events, and how he described the impact on his mental health,” he replied.
The witness also acknowledged, under cross examination, that he did not have access to some key material, including affidavits sworn by Tarrant’s trial lawyers.
The court has heard those lawyers will give evidence that Tarrant told them he wanted to plead guilty in 2019, when he was early in his stint of solitary confinement.
Asked if he had access to those affidavits, the expert replied: “No, I did not”.
Hawes also asked if the expert had access to various letters prepared by psychiatrists, connected to the assessments of Tarrant’s mental health.
The witness said he had some reports, but not the letters that the lawyer was referring to.
He also claimed he had never contested evidence from the Crown’s witnesses who said Tarrant was mentally fit enough to enter pleas.
“I’ve never said that he wasn’t fit to plead at all, I’m just trying to explain how he’s gone not guilty, to guilty, and now back to not guilty,” he said.
Hawes replied that he was confused about what the expert was actually saying.
“I believe I’m here to answer the question I was asked, which was, ‘what would be the reason why Mr Tarrant would change his plea from not guilty, to guilty, and back to not guilty’,” he replied.
Hawes then asked what the psychiatrist was adding to the picture, saying “why doesn’t Mr Tarrant just do the report”?
“I guess Mr Tarrant could have done it on his own, but I was asked to do it and I did so in good faith,” the witness replied.
Later, he denied that he had “just accepted” Tarrant’s version of events.
“I’ve attempted to understand how he changed his plea from not guilty to guilty and now back to not guilty, and the only conditions that could explain that I believe was what he was subject to between March 2019 and September 20.”
The hearing will continue for the rest of the week.
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