In today's headlines with Wilhelmina Shrimpton, Kiwi on board sunk luxury yacht, thousands of St John staff walk off the job, and boost to Auckland safety.
They aremanslaughter convicts Kaiya Shute and William Allister Grace.
Shute’s latest battle for permanent name suppression ended last month, with the Court of Appeal rejecting her bid. However, she was given 20 working days to consider whether she would challenge the Court of Appeal decision. The deadline lapsed this evening.
Grace, her now ex-boyfriend, did not seek continued name suppression. However, the courts had until now barred him from being named because doing so might have led to Shute’s identification.
Shute and Grace were also both 18 years old when they were charged with manslaughter in April 2022, just days after Boyd was taken off life support.
During their trial last October, prosecutors said it was nothing more than “pointless teen drama” that prompted both defendants to grab Boyd’s arm and drive off as he stood beside their SUV outside a Britomart nightclub. He jumped onto the runnerboard of the vehicle to avoid being dragged but fell into the street a short distance later, suffering a catastrophic head injury.
Grace, who was driving, claimed he feared for his and his passengers’ safety after Boyd voiced a threat through the open window and allegedly started throwing punches. Shute, meanwhile, testified that she never grabbed Boyd’s arm and was in shock when her co-defendant did so.
Connor Boyd, 18, died in April 2022 after he was run over in Central Auckland. Kaiya Shute and William Allister Grace, who were convicted of manslaughter, have now been named.
But jurors, who repeatedly watched horrific CCTV footage of the tumble, didn’t buy the defence and neither did the sentencing judge. The incident occurred after a night of drinking and “aggressive bullying”, Justice Ian Gault noted during the duo’s sentencing hearing in February.
“He was outnumbered by you and your friends and did not demonstrate any physical aggression towards you,” Gault told Shute. “Were it not for your animus to Mr Boyd through that night, coupled with your assistance to Mr Grace in the vehicle, Mr Boyd’s death would not have resulted.”
He ordered a sentence of two years and two months imprisonment for Shute and two-and-half years for Grace. Both had sought home detention based in part on their youth.
In April, two months after the sentencing, defence lawyer Emma Priest appeared before the Court of Appeal in Wellington to contest the prison term and rejection of Shute’s bid for permanent name suppression.
The defendant had received a favourable decision from the Court of Appeal in the past.
In June 2022, while still awaiting trial, the High Court ordered suppression to lapse. Shute had argued, then unsuccessfully, that online vitriol and threats as a result of Boyd’s death would lead to “extreme hardship” if she was to be identified in the media. But two months later, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision, allowing suppression to remain in place until the start of the trial. The decision, however, was based on their fair-trial rights rather than extreme hardship.
Co-defendants Kaiya Shute and William Grace appear in the dock as their 2023 manslaughter trial begins in the High Court at Auckland. They were found guilty of the manslaughter of 18-year-old Connor Boyd. Photo / Dean Purcell
“The concerning issue in the present case flows from the creation of the online petition seeking to persuade the Crown to charge the appellant and G with murder rather than manslaughter, and to seek ‘crowd funding’ to assist Mr Boyd’s family,” the appellate court said at the time.
“We also regard with concern the fact that, a few days before the present appeal was heard, the person who created the petition posted further material on Instagram that included a photograph of the appellant...
“We agree with the Judge that the court is not the arbiter of social media standards. However, the court is the arbiter of measures necessary to guard against the erosion of fair trial rights. We see the creation of the online petition as being an attempt to directly influence the criminal justice process.”
Justice Gault allowed the couple to keep suppression through the duration of their trial, but in a hearing days after their conviction rejected Shute’s bid for permanent name suppression during which her lawyers made a similar “extreme hardship” argument based on her youth and social media posts. The names continued to be kept secret, however, to preserve her right to appeal.
Shute’s parents, well-known stuntwoman Dayna Grant and Auckland restauranteur Steve Shute, also sought permanent name suppression. Both claimed they would suffer extreme hardship to their careers if linked to the case against their daughter. Gault denied the requests, which were abandoned as the case was elevated to the Court of Appeal.
This time, Shute’s luck with the Court of Appeal had run out.
“...We do not consider any likely social media commentary to be of such a level that it will compromise Ms Shute’s clear potential for rehabilitation,” the justices wrote in last month’s decision.
“While Ms Priest is correct to highlight Ms Shute’s lesser role in the index offending because she was not the driver, we do not agree that her culpability is low,” the decision also noted. “As the [sentencing] Judge observed, but for Ms Shute’s animus towards Mr Boyd and her own actions, Mr Boyd would not have been killed.
“Furthermore, there are other relevant factors which further weigh in favour of open justice. These include the strong opposition to Ms Shute’s name suppression conveyed by Mr Boyd’s family and the fact that if Ms Shute’s name were suppressed, it is difficult to see how Mr Grace’s name would also avoid suppression. For all these reasons, we would have declined to grant Ms Shute name suppression in any event.”
In its decision last month, the Court of Appeal also denied Shute’s sentence appeal. She will seek leave from the Supreme Court to challenge that aspect of the decision, the court has been told.
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.
