only because he was irrational<\/a> due to the solitary nature of his prison conditions.<\/p>\nOn Wednesday afternoon, the court heard from Dr Tony Ellis, who represented the terrorist for about six months in 2021, and Ron Mansfield KC, who represented him for just over a year from late 2021.<\/p>\n
Ellis told the court he was primarily engaged by Tarrant to obtain a copy of the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s report into the terror attack.<\/p>\n
He obtained a copy of the report and sent it to the prison, however, it did not reach the terrorist.<\/p>\n
Ellis said the terrorist had also raised the possibility of launching an appeal. But the lawyer was not willing to act for him.<\/p>\n
“If I was going to act for him on appeal he wanted me to do precisely as ordered and basically act as his mouthpiece,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I told him I wasn’t prepared to act in those circumstances.”<\/p>\n
Ellis had spoken to the terrorist a dozen times on the phone and the conversations were often lengthy.<\/p>\n
“Many clients who have been detained in solitary confinement, they want to have a chat with somebody because its psychologically harmful to be left in solitary confinement and you need human interaction,” he told the court.<\/p>\n
Mansfield had primarily been engaged to assist the terrorist in preparing for the coronial inquiry into the deaths of the 51 people murdered on 15 March 2019.<\/p>\n
He then assisted the terrorist with taking steps towards seeking judicial review of his prison conditions.<\/p>\n
Mansfield found the terrorist’s prison conditions to be unsatisfactory.<\/p>\n
The terrorist had also raised the possibility of appealing his convictions and sentence, Mansfield said.<\/p>\n
However, the terrorist had discussed the possibility of representing himself.<\/p>\n
The terrorist dispensed with Mansfield’s services in April 2023 after becoming frustrated at the time it took for his legal matters to progress.<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeal will hear legal arguments on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Al Noor Mosque where 51 people were killed in a terrorist attack in 2019. Photo: RNZ \/ Nate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-278445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}