In a somewhat rare occurrence, the 6-year-old brother of Chandler Grafner testified against his own father Friday afternoon in Jon Phillips’ murder trial.
Dominick Phillips sat in a room adjacent to Denver District Courtroom 16 and testified via a closed-circuit television screen visible to the jury and other parties, as well as the public.
Dominick is the half-brother of Chandler, who was 7 when he died on May 6, 2007. Prosecutors have charged Phillips, Chandler’s legal guardian, with first-degree murder, alleging that Chandler died of dehydration and starvation. Defense attorneys claim he suffered from acute diabetes and died of complications.
Dominick and Chandler had the same mother, while Phillips is only the father of Dominick.
Responding to questions from deputy district attorney Verna Carpenter, Dominick said, “Chandler is in heaven.”
When asked what happened when Chandler was given a time-out, he said, “sometimes he’d be in the corner.”
As soon as the questioning focused on going to the bathroom, Dominick began to squirm in his large, leather arm chair, sometimes biting his wrist, while his arms rested on the oak table in front of him.
After being asked three or four times whether Chandler could go to the potty during time-outs, he finally said “sometimes.”
On Thursday, prosectors introduced evidence that Chandler was kept in a linen closet, in a space the size of an oven, which had a horrible smell and stains from what prosecutors say was Chandler defecating.
The coroner who performed the autopsy on Chandler last year told the jury this morning, the fifth day of testimony, that he found no evidence of diabetes in Chandler’s body, and that the boy died of dehydration and starvation.
Dr. Robert Whitmore, who performed the autopsy on Chandler in May 2007, told the jury that he found a normal pancreas and a normal amount of islet cells that produced a normal amount of insulin.
“My opinion is that he did not die of diabetes. He died of starvation and dehydration,” Whitmore testified.
Whitmore ran through a litany of tests and conclusions that supported his opinion on the cause of death. He said Chandler’s eyes were sunken because of an absence of subcutaneous fat that normally supports the eyes. The boy had flaky, dry skin consistent with dehydration. Also, his hair pulled out easily because of, in his opinion, a lack of nutrition.
Chandler had roughly one-half cup of mucoid brown liquid in his stomach, Whitmore said, which probably was only gastric and intestinal secretions.
“Did you find any evidence that Chandler Grafner had drunk a bottle of Gatorade before his death?” asked Deputy District Attorney David Lamb. “No,” replied Whitmore.
Phillips told a Denver police homicide detective during an interview after Chandler’s death that the boy was drinking Gatorade shortly before he died. Phillips also told police that Chandler had eaten two or three cups of oatmeal, along with bread and cheese, the night before he died.
