Woman pleads guilty in Chandler's starvation

By Mike McPhee  The Denver Post

In an unexpected development Monday, Sarah Berry, the co-defendant of Jon Phillips in the Chandler Grafner starvation murder trial, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder just hours before she was scheduled for trial.

No one from the district attorney's office would discuss Berry's change of plea after Phillips' two-week trial went to the jury about 4 p.m.

Berry changed her plea just 30 minutes later, as Phillips' jury barely got started in its deliberations in the death of the 7-year-old boy. Her trial was to begin this morning, and she faced a first-degree murder charge.

That charge carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. By pleading guilty to a lesser charge, Berry agreed to a 48-year prison sentence and five years' probation.

Berry's timing was risky because Phillips' fate had not been decided.

Denver District Judge John Madden IV instructed the jury Monday afternoon that it also could opt to convict him of reckless manslaughter, which carries a sentencing range of up to 16 years, or criminally negligent homicide, which carries a sentencing range of up to six years.

Neither of Berry's attorneys commented, nor did prosecutors David Lamb or Verna Carpenter.

Phillips, 27, and Berry, 23, lived together and had legal custody of Chandler and his younger half-brother, Dominick Phillips, who is Jon Phillips' only son. Chandler died on May 6, 2007, of what the coroner ruled was starvation and dehydration.

During closing arguments Monday, Lamb gave the jury an emotional argument in a booming voice, saying Phillips deliberately killed Chandler by withholding food as a weapon against the boy.

"Chandler Grafner was killed by that man, sitting right there in a green shirt," Lamb shouted. "He knew as well as everyone in this courtroom that if you don't feed a child, he'll die."

The courtroom, packed with media, homicide detectives, prosecutors and their aides, as well as family members and friends, was silent.

Lamb laid out a chronology of abuse, starting Jan. 17, when Chandler came to school with a badly bruised ear, saying: "My dad clobbered me." He listed, by month, the development of more bruising, more blaming Phillips and Berry, and finally the Easter dinner on April 7, 2007. That's when Chandler was forced to eat oatmeal while nine members of Phillips' family ate pork roast.

In rebuttal, defense attorney Darren Cantor took the floor and spoke about "the winds of emotions blowing through the investigation and now this courtroom." He said that prosecutors and investigators jumped to conclusions from the very beginning and never considered that Chandler died a year ago from "unrecognized diabetes."

Cantor said the prosecution's story of starvation had "to be stacked up just right" to make it fit.

"Science is what tells us what happened, not these emotions and whims," he said. "Science tells us that the body consumes itself when it can't get to sugar."

He attacked the prosecution's arguments point by point, claiming the feces that covered the floor of a closet where Chandler was forced to spend "time-outs" were cat feces and never identified by investigators as human feces.

"Not a single piece of Chandler's clothing had feces or urine on it. Not a single spot of feces was found on Chandler, not under his fingernails or his toenails," Cantor said. "Why didn't the prosecution show us any of Chandler's clothing?

"The evidence doesn't fit. None of the experts ever identified the fingerprints in the closet. Nor did they tell us they were of a child or an adult.

"If Chandler had been screaming week after week, why didn't the prosecution present any of the neighbors? These aren't soundproof apartments," Cantor said of the apartment complex at 3300 S. Tamarac St.

He said Phillips fought for custody of Chandler for a year.

"In order to starve this child?" he asked rhetorically. "If your goal is to rid yourself of a child, this is one of the hardest ways to do it.

"This case is a far cry from first-degree murder," Cantor said. "This is someone who missed the signs of diabetes."

Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com

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