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“He was outnumbered by you and your friends and did not demonstrate any physical aggression towards you,” Justice Ian Gault told the female defendant during the sentencing hearing. “Were it not for your animus to Mr Boyd through that night, coupled with your assistance to [the male defendant] in the vehicle, Mr Boyd’s death would not have resulted.”
He ordered sentences of two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for the male defendant followed by a sentence of two years and two months’ imprisonment for his former girlfriend. Both defendants have lost name suppression at the High Court level but cannot yet be named while the matter is pending with the Court of Appeal.
The female defendant covered her eyes with her hands and put her feet on her chair, with her knees up to her face, after her co-defendant learned he wouldn’t be receiving home detention. When the judge indicated she also wouldn’t be receiving it, she stood up and walked out of the dock before the end sentence could be announced. Court proceedings paused for several minutes as the judge waited for security to return her to the courtroom.
As was often the case during last year’s trial, today’s hearing was filled to capacity with young people - so much so that the proceeding was moved at the last minute to the High Court at Auckland’s largest courtroom. Some of those in attendance wore black T-shirts emblazoned with Boyd’s image and #justice4connor typed in large yellow print on the back. Family members held a red skateboarding-brand shoebox containing Boyd’s ashes.
“There are no words to describe the infinite pain I feel,” the victim’s father, John Boyd, said during an emotional victim impact statement at the start of the hearing. “I will forever be haunted by this nightmare.”
The father said he sat through every day of trial and each pre-trial hearing over the past two years.
“Sitting through all of the evidence was important to me but of course it was horrific,” he said, adding that it was especially difficult to see his son had been assaulted multiple times that night by “so-called friends” whom he had trusted. “I saw no remorse from either defendant or their families.”
Connor Boyd, 18, died in April 2022 after he was run over in Central Auckland. Two other teens were charged with manslaughter.
Boyd was taken off life support after suffering unsurvivable head injuries on the morning of April 24, 2022. He had been clinging to the side of the male defendant’s SUV when he fell into Auckland Central’s busy Customs St. The horrific tumble - outside Saturdays Britomart nightclub, where the three had earlier crossed paths - was caught on CCTV and played repeatedly for jurors during the couple’s trial in October.
Both the victim and both defendants were 18 years old when the incident occurred.
The male defendant acknowledged in the witness box that he had grabbed Boyd through the window of his Toyota Hilux and started driving away about 2.30am as he was headed back to the couple’s Ponsonby apartment with the co-defendant. But he insisted that he slowed down and let go before turning from Gore St into Customs St.
At the point the SUV slowed, defence lawyer Paul Borich, KC, argued, the whole incident could have ended without injury. But with his ego hurt, Boyd then took the initiative by running alongside the vehicle, jumping on the running board as the defendant tried to drive off and throwing punches at the driver through the open window, the defence lawyer argued.
Crown prosecutor Claire Paterson argued there was no indication in the footage that the male defendant’s SUV ever slowed down as it sharply cut the corner from Gore St into Customs St, leaving Boyd with no viable option for extracting himself from the side of the vehicle safely. He jumped on the running board only because he had no other option aside from being dragged, she suggested.
She also expressed strong doubts that Boyd threw any punches at all, pointing to video stills in which his arms seemed to be fully extended as he gripped the side of the vehicle. But even if he had thrown a punch at that point, it would have been a justified response as he tried to get the vehicle to stop so he could dismount, she argued.
Meanwhile, defence lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade, KC, representing the female defendant, said her client never grabbed Boyd at all as the SUV was moving. Paterson insisted the female defendant’s arm could clearly be seen outside the window, holding on to Boyd from behind in the back passenger seat as her boyfriend held on to him from the driver’s seat.
The young couple convicted of causing the death of 18-year-old Connor Boyd outside a Central Auckland nightclub still have name suppression. They were sentenced today in the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell
During today’s hearing, the Crown characterised Boyd’s death as the culmination of “a night of bullying” at the hands of the couple.
“This was a situation which was entirely avoidable - entirely manufactured by the defendants’ conduct,” Paterson said, noting that the jury rejected all claims of self-defence. “Mr Boyd posed absolutely no threat at all to ... the occupants of that vehicle.
“This was clearly aggressive bullying [by the defendants] that got out of control.”
The defence emphasised prior judgments in which it was emphasised that young people have neurological differences from adults that make them more impulsive. They also emphasised that young people, because they aren’t yet fully developed, have a greater capacity for rehabilitation.
Pre-sentencing reports provided to the court assessed both defendants as presenting a low risk of future offending.
Borich maintained during his submissions to the judge on behalf of the male defendant that Boyd’s death was a “tragic accident” prompted in part by his own aggressive behaviour that night. He suggested Justice Gault could still infer as much despite the jury’s guilty verdicts.
He added that his client “was, is and remains remorseful” despite assessments to the contrary in both the victim impact statements and in a pre-sentencing report. Kincade also said her client regrets her behaviour that night “and has taken steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again”. She noted a pre-sentence report described her client as a “reserved, thoughtful, humble young woman”.
The judge agreed that youth played a large part in the couple’s “very bad choices” that night and allowed for significant discounts. But the discounts weren’t high enough to bring the sentences below two years, which is the point at which a judge can consider home detention.
Family and friends described Boyd today a “soft and kind” young man with a dry sense of humour who would light up a room when he entered. They described the horror of spending the last four days of his life unconscious and surrounded by wires and tubes in the hospital.
“He was always the type to walk away. He hated conflict,” Boyd’s sister told the courtroom during her victim impact statement, describing him as such a gentle soul that he had never even been on a rollercoaster: “He was so scared of them.”
She praised her brother for walking away each time he was seen on CCTV footage being assaulted that night.
“Up until his last breath he was a gentleman,” she said.
Large sighs of relief could be heard in the gallery from family members and supporters as the judge declined home detention. The female defendant’s mother sobbed as the courtroom emptied a short time later, saying her daughter didn’t do it.
In addition to the manslaughter charges, the male defendant was found guilty of failure to stop and render aid and pleaded guilty to one count of common assault for having punched Boyd earlier that night. The female defendant was either found guilty or pleaded guilty to three counts of common assault and three counts of assault with intent to injure. Those charges related to kicking and slapping Boyd prior to his death and to attacks on another teen at the nightclub that same week.
The pair were handed concurrent sentences for each of the other charges.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
