Court upholds Christchurch man Rex Poole’s guilty plea to sexual violation amid claims of coercion

The Supreme Court ruled Rex Poole's convictions remain. Photo / Mark Mitchell

WARNING: This story deals with sexual offending and may be distressing.

A desperate series of appeals claiming coercion, ill-advice and dramatic accusations has ended with the Supreme Court reaffirming a man’s sentence for the attempted rape of a friend.

Rex Malcolm Poole was sentenced in the href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/district-court" target="_blank">Christchurch District Court in 2022 after pleading guilty to charges of attempted sexual violation, causing harm by posting digital communications and driving with excess blood alcohol level.

On November 9, 2017, Poole visited the complainant, his friend, to return property and the incident unfolded when he refused to leave.

Poole climbed into the complainant’s bed and attempted to rape him as he resisted and consistently told him to stop.

A person who lived at the house said she heard the complainant crying and caught Poole in the act. He later tried to say he was the one being raped.

“That’s not what I saw,” the witness said in a statement to the court.

A medical examination revealed multiple injuries to the complainant and forensic evidence linked Poole’s DNA to the crime scene.

After multiple court delays and lawyers, Poole pleaded guilty but then applied to change his plea in the District Court. The application was refused.

Poole claimed he was not adequately prepared to enter a guilty plea, was coerced and “worn down to the point where he simply gave up”.

At a 2021 hearing, Judge Gerard Martin Lynch found Poole was a forthright man who expressed himself clearly and it was “inconceivable” that he simply rolled over and entered a guilty plea he did not want or intend to enter.

He was sentenced to 12 months home detention for the sexual violation and six months home detention for causing harm by digital communications.

Poole appealed to the Court of Appeal (COA) which sided with the District Court’s decision.

The COA found Poole was experienced in the court system and entered the guilty plea freely without duress.

The man was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court in 2022. Photo / George Heard

“He had in the past demonstrated a preparedness to dismiss lawyers, even near trial, and that this “sits uneasily with the suggestion that Mr Poole had felt trapped and had no choice but to plead guilty because of (lawyer) Mr Bamford’s alleged shortcomings and the pending trial”.

The COA also found Poole changed his story as he attempted to claim he was stupefied by the complainant, details which were never raised at the first interview with police.

The Supreme Court has now released the final decision saying all courts were correct in their decisions.

“Mr Poole essentially reprises the same arguments as in the Courts below. He also raises longstanding grievances he holds against the justice system generally.

“These grievances are irrelevant to the application to withdraw the guilty plea,” the decision said.

“The case has already been the subject of detailed consideration in the Courts below and nothing raised by Mr Poole suggests that these decisions were wrong in any material way.

“There is thus no risk of a miscarriage of justice.”

The appeal was dismissed.

Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/ Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.