New Zealand's Court of Appeal has rejected white supremacist Brenton Tarrant's bid to overturn his guilty pleas and convictions for the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacres, ruling his case was "utterly devoid of merit". The unanimous decision by a panel of three judges, issued on Thursday, means Tarrant, 35, will continue serving a sentence of life imprisonment without parole — the harshest penalty ever handed down in New Zealand's legal history.

Tarrant, an Australian national born in New South Wales who moved to New Zealand in 2017, carried out the deadliest mass shooting in the country's modern history on 15 March 2019, killing 51 Muslim worshippers and injuring 40 others at the Al Noor mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, a city on New Zealand's South Island. He livestreamed part of the attack on Facebook and had posted a 74-page racist manifesto online beforehand. He pleaded guilty in March 2020 to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one terrorism charge, and was sentenced in August of that year.

In his appeal, heard over a week beginning 9 February, Tarrant argued that "torturous and inhumane" conditions during his detention — including solitary confinement with limited reading material and minimal contact with other prisoners — had left him suffering "nervous exhaustion" and incapable of making rational decisions when he entered his guilty pleas. The court found these claims wholly unconvincing, noting they were contradicted by prison authorities, mental health professionals and his own trial lawyers, all of whom observed him at the relevant time. "He 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," the judges wrote. The court also noted that Tarrant had failed to adequately explain the lengthy delay in filing his appeal, despite having access to legal counsel throughout.

In an unusual development during the proceedings, Tarrant submitted two notices seeking to abandon his appeal entirely, both signed under a pseudonym. The first was rejected because it was undated and unwitnessed; the second, though formally valid, did not halt the court's consideration. The judges pressed ahead regardless, concluding that the facts of his offending were "beyond dispute" and that he had "not identified any arguable defence, or indeed any defence known to the law."

For survivors and victims' families, the ruling brought profound relief. Aya al-Umari, who lost her brother Hussein in the attack, said she was "pleased and relieved" and that the decision confirmed "justice is being served again", while acknowledging that the appeal process had forced many back to their most painful moments. Lawyers representing victims' families said "the law has now done its job" and that families would be spared the trauma of a retrial. The attack had already reshaped New Zealand's legal and political landscape: within a month of the shootings, parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban military-style semi-automatic weapons, and an ongoing coronial inquest — the largest in New Zealand's history — continues to examine the circumstances of the attack. A separate question, whether Tarrant could be compelled to testify at that inquest, remains open after a high court ruling in October 2025 left the possibility alive.