Bizarre antics by cop-shooter during court challenge
A man serving an open-ended prison term for trying to murder two police officers has made a bizarre bid for freedom from behind bars.
Rhys Warren was sentenced to preventive detention in August at the High Court in Tauranga but was absent for some of the hearing after he challenged the court’s authority over him and said he was not Warren.
A jury had found Warren guilty of trying to murder two officers, wounding a third, and using a firearm against a fourth officer, arising out of a standoff at a house near Kawerau, Bay of Plenty, in March 2016.
In late October, a habeas corpus application was filed by someone calling himself Te Tangata Whenua, as a personal and third-party representative of Rhys Warren.
‘‘They appear to be the same person,’’ Justice Joe Williams said in a brief decision from the High Court in Wellington.
Habeas corpus is a request for the court to decide if a person’s detention is lawful. Warren was to represent himself and a conference by phone call was arranged but Warren would not come to the phone.
The judge asked for evidence about what had happened at the prison and the next day a senior Corrections officer filed a sworn statement saying Warren had become very disruptive and ran around the unit giving CDs and other items to the other prisoners.
He would not take the call from the court when directed, and kept giving away items and abusing staff. Warren was then locked in his cell for the safety of himself and staff.
Warren was given a chance to file written submissions. About two weeks after the deadline pass- ed for those to be filed, he sent submissions challenging the legitimacy of the order under which he was held, and suggesting he was not the person who was named in the order.
The judge said the application for habeas corpus had to be dismissed. Warren was being held under a valid order for the preventive detention sentence and the claimed dual personality point had no prospect of success.