A New York physician testified Friday that 7-year-old Chandler Grafner “absolutely” died of complications of diabetes and not of starvation.
Defense witness Dr. Stephen Factor, a professor at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York and a practicing clinical and anatomical pathologist, challenged the findings of Chandler’s autopsy and much of the core arguments made by prosecutors in Jon Phillips’ first-degree murder trial, which finished its second week Friday in Denver District Court.
Phillips is charged with starving to death the young boy, who lived with Phillips and his girlfriend, Sarah Berry, who is also charged with murder. They also cared for Chandler’s younger half brother, Dominick Phillips.
“I am absolutely certain of death from diabetes,” Factor said by video teleconference from Portland, Maine, where he was vacationing.
Factor said Chandler was hyperglycemic when he died, with an abnormally high level of glucose in the body.
He said the coroner’s autopsy measured glucose at a level of 198 in the vitreous fluid of the eye. Factor argued that vitreous measurement of glucose is always lower than in the blood because some glucose is consumed or absorbed as it enters the vitreous fluid.
That would mean a blood level beyond 200, which suggests the presence of diabetes. The level of glucose in Chandler’s blood wasn’t measured by the coroner.
Factor also disputed the autopsy finding that Chandler’s pancreas was functioning normally with an adequate number of islets, which produce insulin. By measuring tissue from the tail and body of the pancreas, instead of the head as the coroner did, Factor found a “proliferation of islets that were larger than normal, a condition often associated with elevated glucose.”
He also said that the injection of dextrose into Chandler’s body during CPR would not change the glucose level in his vitreous fluid because he was already dead. CPR does not circulate blood into the tiny blood vessels of the eye of a dead person, he said.
He said Chandler did not have bronchial pneumonia, as the autopsy stated, because he found pieces of vomit in his lungs with no inflammation, suggesting they were inhaled into the lungs just before death.
Under cross-examination, Factor admitted that dehydration might have caused the death. But he said he couldn’t determine whether the dehydration was “external,” from a lack of fluid intake, or “internal,” caused by diabetic hyperglycemia.
Earlier Friday, a child psychologist testified for the defense that police questioning of Dominick Phillips was flawed and may have caused him to give misleading answers.
Edward Wilson III, an expert in child development, child psychology and investigative questioning — brought in from Delaware by Phillips’ lawyers — said children will give the answers they believe the questioner wants.
“Pushing a child to come up with answers, particularly through repeated questions, will get you the answer the child hopes is what you want,” Wilson said. “The child believes the questioning will end with the right answer.”
