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There was a public celebration of the life sentence without parole for the Christchurch terrorist who admitted to murdering 51 people and attempting to murder 40 others.
29-year-old mass murderer and convicted terrorist Brenton Tarrant is still relatively young, which means he could well spend several decades in custody.
Kai Schwoerer / Getty Images
Armed police officers and a police dog handler are seen in front of Christchurch High Court prior to the sentencing of the Christchurch shooter.
Life imprisonment, like pretrial detention, typically has two elements. The first is the period that must be served for purposes of punishment before a request for parole can be made. The second is based on risk and is evaluated by the Parole Board: only if an inmate sentenced to life is at acceptably low risk, will he be released during this second period.
In short, life can always mean life. But generally, because the risk is reduced, an indeterminate sentence is the period set for punishment plus any additional period when the risk is still too high. A life sentence means that the second stage is never reached.
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Is this problematic from a human rights perspective? This was an argument directed to the judge.
Are human rights a problem?
The guiding principle behind how we treat prisoners is the need to attempt rehabilitation.
But if there is no incentive to rehabilitate from the prisoner’s perspective, they are effectively stored for the rest of his life. Some might argue that this means that the detention risks becoming arbitrary. Furthermore, it could be said that it is inhuman and degrading not to allow any hope for the inmate.
Some nations, like Norway, do not allow life imprisonment precisely because it is considered to be in violation of those standards.
JOSEPH JOHNSON / THINGS
The Muslim community and the locals of Cass Bay planted bushes to beautify the area where 51 trees were planted in memory of the victims of the mosque shooting.
The world’s most active human rights court, the European Court of Human Rights, has added its support to the view that prisoners must have some mechanism to ensure that hope is not extinguished.
But the cases before the European Court have not involved an atrocity of this nature. It may be that the judges of that court reach a different conclusion based on the extreme facts of the attacks on the Christchurch mosque.
There is a powerful argument that the importance of protecting the human rights of victims and potential future victims requires denunciation through the most severe sentence available in the hope that others will not follow in the perverted footsteps of the accused.
Why an appeal is unlikely
In the event of an appeal, our Court of Appeal may consider whether there should be any prospect of release to encourage rehabilitation.
There is also another important legal issue that you might consider.
It is normal for guilty pleas to receive credit. The sentencing hearing necessarily brought back the horrors of the events in Christchurch last March. But how much worse would it have been if there had been a trial and the victims and the wider community had to relive each shot in detail?
Saving that trauma can be reflected in a reduced sentence. The only reduction of a life sentence is to allow a request for parole, even at a distant moment.
But in his sentencing statements in Christchurch Superior Court, Judge Cameron Mander said the relatively late guilty plea, in March this year, did not replace the need for a life sentence. Added:
He attached much more weight to another principle of the sentence, which is that the maximum sentence should be used for the worst possible example of crime.
Joseph Johnson / Stuff
Christchurch gunman boarded the New Zealand Air Force plane after his life sentence without parole.
The depravity of this atrocity qualified for the designation as the worst possible example of crime. A terrorist mass murder is clearly the type of crime that should lead to life in prison without parole, the most severe sentence in our justice system.
In particular, the defendant’s attorney accepted life in prison without parole was appropriate. The defendant represented himself during the hearing but made no intervention.
The judge had sensibly appointed an attorney to be available should the defendant change his mind and want representation. He did, but only for this standby attorney to agree that the maximum available sentence was adequate.
Lawyers are bound by the instructions of their clients, so the defense attorney was unable to present any counter-arguments to the judge. Those instructions are important in the sense that an appeal will occur only if the defendant wishes to appeal. The surprising acceptance of the sentence by the defendant suggests that he will not appeal.
So who made the arguments against? The judge ensured fairness in the process by having another attorney, Kerry Cook, make statements contrary to the law. This attorney did not represent the defendant but appeared as a friend of the court, Latin for “friend of the court”.
Given all this, the only mechanism to prevent the death in prison of New Zealand’s only convicted terrorist is release on compassionate grounds. The 2002 Probation Act allows this only if someone is seriously ill and unlikely to recover. Even then, it is at the discretion of the Parole Board.
As it is, life in this case means life.
-Kris Gledhill, is a law professor, Auckland University of Technology
-This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
