Couple’s argument ends with woman’s head injury and partner Arthur De Mornac in court

A young Frenchman charged when his girlfriend was seriously injured after falling from his car during an argument has managed to avoid a conviction, mostly due to apparent “overcharging” by police when they laid his charges.

Arthur Boscal De Reals De Mornac, of Auckland, and his girlfriend, who was visiting from France, became embroiled in an argument so intense on the night of January 19 this year that they left their Cambridge accommodation worried that they were disturbing the property owners.

But soon afterwards the woman suffered a serious head injury after she fell from the slow-moving vehicle De Mornac was driving.

The now 22-year-old, who has lived in New Zealand since 2015 and has become a permanent resident, was charged with wounding with reckless disregard, which carries a seven-year maximum prison sentence. He appeared in the Hamilton District Court yesterday fighting to avoid a conviction.

The court heard the pair had been travelling the country together.

The night of the fight, they left the property and continued arguing, with De Mornac at times demanding she get out of the car, before returning to pick her up.

This repeated until around 5.15am when he again left her, before soon finding her in the Countdown car park and driving up next to her.

He spoke to her through the sunroof and began driving away but the victim grabbed and hung on to the sunroof.

De Mornac closed it and she fell backward and hit her head.

He returned to get her. She was later taken to hospital and had multiple injuries including skull fractures, bruising, scratches, and scrapes.

A week after the incident she was well enough to fly home to France.

‘The consequences don’t necessarily fit the charge'

Counsel Tom Sutcliffe said the issue for the court was that they had a “relatively young man” having to deal with the lifelong consequences of such a serious charge, which would likely not affect his citizenship, but rather his ability to get back into the country should he travel.

Then there would be issues explaining the conviction to prospective employers when it was “at the very low end of the scale for charges of this type”.

“The consequences are that the charge did not necessarily fit what actually happened.”

However, his client did “what is right” by pleading guilty but it did mean he was put “in a situation where this is what we ended up with”, Sutcliffe told the court.

“It’s ... [a situation] of whether there is overcharging involved.”

Judge Collins questioned Sutcliffe as to whether the police had opposed changing the charge to dangerous or reckless driving causing injury, a charge that a prospective employer would likely be able to better understand at first blush.

Sutcliffe said he’d discussed the charge of careless driving causing injury with police, who wouldn’t budge given the seriousness of the victim’s injuries.

The judge said he could see why they didn’t accept anything lower than dangerous driving.

Sutcliffe, in pursuing the discharge, said the court had a “young man who has made an error of judgment in a situation that he was finding it difficult to deal with”.

“That error of judgment had almost ... catastrophic consequences,” he said, adding that the victim had fully recovered.

“Given everything that has been said about what this young man has done ... and the level of seriousness ... it doesn’t involve any direct violence towards anybody.

“This is not a case where he has gone out to deliberately hurt somebody.”

The judge then turned to the police prosecutor, who was opposed to the 106 application, telling her “a lot of people would think that this is overcharged”.

“In terms of criminality, what criminality does this charge meet that a charge of dangerous driving causing injury couldn’t meet?” he asked.

However, the prosecutor was unable to explain.

‘Immaturity heavily at play’

Judge Collins said the court often sees far worse driving from people facing charges of dangerous or reckless driving, “but that hasn’t been the charge here”.

“I’m not saying the charge wasn’t open to the prosecution, but on its face, it leads to a rather misleading impression that a Land Transport Act charge was unavailable.”

He noted De Mornac was in the middle of completing a domestic violence course and said he had issues with his attitude and ability to relate to women.

The judge also recommended he read the book, See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill, about domestic violence and added that “immaturity was heavily at play” that night.

“She didn’t make you do anything, Mr De Mornac and if you had approached your relationship with her differently you would not have been driving off and leaving her on her own in the early hours of the morning in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language.

“That’s what underlies really, what’s at play here.”

While the offending was serious, he took into account De Mornac’s guilty plea, remorse, offer of emotional harm, support from the victim, his young age and rehabilitative prospects, and agreed to grant the discharge without conviction.

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and has been a journalist for 20.