The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips

by Stephen Baldwin

  “Was this a normal response from a parent in a situation like this?” Chambliss asked.

  “Objection,” Edmonds said. “The prosecutor is leading the witness.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Houk said.

  “In your nearly seven years of experience as a police officer, what manner of behavior have you observed in other parents when their child has been injured?” Chambliss asked, rephrasing his question.

  “Nothing like this. A lot of parents rush over and try to be so close to their child that it prevents us from working on them. Others, when they give you the distance you need to administer help, cry and weep and carry on or show extreme anxiety in some other way. Mr. Phillips not only kept his distance, he seemed very detached from the situation. He began talking about what his son’s name meant. At one point he even offered to pray for me. I have never before observed a parent who demonstrated so little emotional response to the injury or death of a child,” Andy said.

  “You said the floor was covered with blood. Was the child bleeding?”

  “Yes, sir. From the back of his head. Although the blood wasn’t flowing freely like it obviously had earlier, it still dripped from the back of his head. The pillow on which he’d been laid was soaked with blood, and the mixture of blood and water covered the floor. It pretty much ruined the uniform I had on that night,” Andy said.

  “Were the defendant’s clothes covered with blood as well?”

  “No. He freely admitted later he had changed clothes between the time Gabe died and when I arrived.”

  “Is there anything unusual about that?”

  “In my experience, yes. Mr. Phillips took the time to change his clothes, but he never called the police or fire departments for help. I’ve never seen that in a parent. Usually, a mother or father is so upset by their child’s injury and so focused on trying to help them, they lose sight of everything else. I found this quite odd,” Andy said.

  “Objection,” Edmonds said. “This is nothing but conjecture on the part of the witness.”

  “On the contrary,” Chambliss said. “The unusual nature of the defendant’s response on the night in question calls into doubt the defendant’s explanation of Gabriel Phillips’s death. His actions aroused the suspicions of law enforcement professionals from the very beginning. This is not conjecture on the officer’s part, but a clear observation of an abnormal emotional reaction to this traumatic event.”

  “Objection overruled. You may continue, Mr. Chambliss,” the judge said.

  “What did you do after unsuccessfully trying CPR?” Chambliss asked.

  “I radioed in for the coroner and the Harris County Sheriff’s Department to come to the scene. The sheriff’s department takes the lead in investigating potential crime scenes like this. I also agreed to let the dispatcher call out the fire department paramedics and an ambulance. To me, it was apparent that the boy was dead. However, I wanted to make sure we gave him every possible chance to survive,” Andy said.

  “Did the defendant say how long it had been since the accident occurred when you arrived?” Chambliss asked.

  “He said ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Would that ten or fifteen minutes have made a difference in saving Gabriel Phillips’s life?” Chambliss asked.

  “Objection,” Edmonds said. “The witness is a police officer, not a doctor.”

  “Sustained,” the judge said.

  “I withdraw the question. What happened after you radioed in for help?” Chambliss queried.

  “I led Mr. Phillips back into the living room, where we waited. I left him there after the fire department arrived. I had to show the paramedics back into the boy’s bedroom, where some of them didn’t do too well. A couple of them knew Gabriel through their sons and became very distraught. Once Detective Ted Jackson and the sheriff’s department investigative team arrived, I turned the scene over to him and rejoined Mr. Phillips in the living room. He never said anything else. Most of the time he sat with his head down and his eyes closed,” Andy said.

  “Thank you, Officer. No further questions,” Chambliss said.

  “Your witness, Mr. Edmonds,” the judge said.

  Before Donald Edmonds stood up, John whispered something in his ear. Andy didn’t know what he said, but it was pretty clear Edmonds didn’t like it. He let out a loud sigh, then stood and said, “Officer Myers, did you know the deceased child?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And how did you know him?”

  “I am a friend of his mother,” Andy said without offering any further information.

  Edmonds looked down at a sheet of paper in his hand, then glanced back at John. “No further questions,” he said in an agitated voice.

  “Would the prosecution like to ask anything further at this time?” Judge Houk said.

  “No, Your Honor,” Chambliss said.

  “Your Honor,” Edmonds said, “the defense would like to reserve the right to recall the witness at a later time.” Andy couldn’t read minds, but the look on the attorney’s face looked like he said this in spite of what his client had told him.

  “Mr. Chambliss?” the judge said.

  “I have no objections to that, Your Honor. In fact, the prosecution would also like to reserve the right to recall the witness.” That was a lie. The prosecution let out a huge sigh of relief that John’s public defender didn’t hammer Andy about his relationship with Loraine. The D.A. reserved the right to recall Andy only as a way of keeping him as far from the courtroom as possible.

  “Very well,” the judge said. “Thank you, Officer Myers, you may step down.” As Andy walked out of the courtroom, he heard the judge say, “Next witness.”

  And that was it. Andy had to leave the courtroom and he couldn’t go back until the day the judge read the verdict. For the rest of the trial, Andy had to content himself with getting his information from the local news. Every night for a week and a half, some reporter would stand out in front of the courthouse in the cold and tell what had happened that day. When they cut to the courtroom scene, they showed those hokey artist’s renditions that were as close as you could get to the action inside. Cameras wouldn’t be allowed in courtrooms for quite a while yet. The cartoon caricatures of John didn’t squirm and sweat like Andy wanted to see him squirm and sweat, but it was as close as he could get to the courtroom.

  Even as the trial proceeded, Andy held out hope that John would change his plea and admit to what he had done. From the way the news reporters described the action inside the courtroom, John wasn’t doing too well. Sandy Jacobs, the perky little twenty-something blond reporter from channel six’s Action News, described the forensic evidence as “damning” and she called the ex-hooker’s testimony a “bombshell” that severely damaged the image the Phillips defense team presented of their client. “Phillips,” the reporter said, “pressured the former prostitute for sex in repayment for helping her off the street. This hardly fits the picture of a deeply religious man the defense maintains John Phillips is.” Andy stood up from his couch and cheered when the reporter said the defense barely challenged Ms. Peters’s claims.

  Christopher Brilliant, the channel eight field reporter who came across like Geraldo on steroids, described Loraine’s testimony as “gripping” and “heart wrenching.” He told how several members of the jury had tears running down their faces as Loraine described the anguish and guilt she carried since the day her little boy died. Reading from his script, the reporter said she closed her testimony by saying, “He told me that if I ever left him, I would regret it. Well, I regret it now. I wish I’d died instead of my son.” When they switched back to the studio, the female news anchor called the story “tragic,” before moving to a report about a local farmer and his giant beet.

  But all the reporters nearly had a cow right there on the television screen after Brian Paul testified. Andy couldn’t believe his ears when he heard Pamela Martinez, of News Team Thirteen, say that the defense did not even bother to cross-examine �
�little Brian Paul after his tearful account of the murder of his bestest friend.” After hearing that one, Andy immediately called Ted Jackson to get the scoop on what had happened. As the lead detective on the case, Ted Jackson sat at the prosecutor’s table throughout the trial.

  “What happened in the courtroom today?!” Andy asked the moment Ted answered the phone.

  “And hello to you, too,” Ted said. “I figured you would probably call tonight, once the word got out about Brian Paul’s testimony.”

  “So what happened?” Andy asked.

  “Chambliss put the kid on the witness stand, and we each just sort of held our breath. I told you how nervous we were about pinning the case on the testimony of an eight-year-old kid. But the kid had to testify. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. So Brian tells the court that Gabe was afraid of his father because he’d beaten him in the past. At this point Chambliss introduces the pictures of the bruises on Gabe’s body to back up the Paul kid’s story. Everything’s going pretty smooth and I’m thinking we may actually get through this without a hitch. I’m always nervous when kids testify. No matter how many times you talk to them ahead of time, you never know what’s going to come out of their mouths.

  “But when Brian got to the night of the murder, he almost started contradicting himself. He told how he woke up to the sound of Gabe screaming, ‘No, Daddy. Stop it, Daddy. No.’ You know the kid’s story better than I do, you know how it goes. When he gets to the part about running over to his closet, he never said anything about seeing John hit the Phillips boy, through the hole the two of them had bored in the wall. Chambliss almost had to spell that part out for the kid. The boy finally did say the words ‘I saw him do it,’ but he could barely get the words out. The tears started flowing and he began to stutter and stammer. I looked over to the two little hotshot attorneys at the table with me, and we all hoped the jury took Brian’s fumbling around as an indication of how upset he was because of what happened to his best friend, but who knows what they will think? When Chambliss said the words ‘your witness,’ I just knew that Edmonds would tear the kid apart,” Jackson said.

  “So what happened?” Andy said.

  “Nothing. Edmonds didn’t even cross-examine the boy. John leaned over and whispered something in his ear, just like he did when you testified, and Edmonds said, ‘No questions, Your Honor.’ That’s pretty much been the pattern through the first week of this thing. I would say the defense attorney has spent maybe twenty minutes combined cross examining all of our witnesses. He probably asked you more questions than he’s asked anyone, and even then he didn’t press. I really thought he would go after Loraine Phillips. I mean, come on, she’s the most bitter ex-wife I’ve ever met, including my own. But Edmonds barely asked her anything and even then he didn’t ask anything that really mattered. I don’t know what his strategy is, but whatever it might be, it sure as hell ain’t working,” Jackson said.

  Now I would be lying if I told you Andy wasn’t relieved when he heard that the defense left Brian Paul alone. He’d tossed and turned several nights over the thought of what might happen to the boy when he testified. The case wasn’t nearly as strong without the kid. “What was Phillips doing while the boy was talking?” Andy asked.

  “Not much. I think I saw him wipe away a couple of tears, but he didn’t break, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “So what’s next?” Andy said.

  “The prosecution’s finished. We saved Brian Paul for the last, sort of the icing on the cake. The judge sequestered the jury, so we wanted them to leave the courtroom for the weekend with the kid’s words ringing in their ears. The defense is supposed to get started on Monday. I’ve seen their list of witnesses. It’s pretty short. I bet the whole thing is wrapped up by the middle of next week,” Jackson said.

  “What’s your read on the jury?” Andy asked.

  “I’m not the expert people reader that you are,” Jackson said, “but I would say based on how the first week has gone, Phillips doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of walking away from this one.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Andy said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Jackson said.

  TED JACKSON WAS RIGHT. The defense didn’t take long, not in comparison to the prosecution’s case. From what Andy could gather from the bits and pieces of information on the news, and from the little bit he could squeeze out of Ted Jackson, all John’s attorney called were character witnesses. His pastor testified on his behalf, as did the prison chaplain and a few people from John’s church. One name piqued Andy’s attention. Ted mentioned that someone named Eli took the stand. Andy recognized the name as the same as the person to whom John was talking on the phone when Andy arrived on the night of Gabe’s death. However, he didn’t tell Ted or anyone else he recognized the name. It turns out that Eli was the inmate John nearly killed in the fight in the yard, then turned around and saved his life. From the way they described him on the news, Eli told quite a story from that day in the prison yard. I guess his point was that John would never hurt anyone, especially someone he loved. However, it had little to do with the night of Gabe’s death.

  The defense rested late Monday afternoon with John testifying on his own behalf. Ted Jackson told him later that John never got too far away from his basic defense of “I didn’t do it. I have nothing to hide. God is my witness that I loved my son and would never harm him.” As for the testimony against him, he dismissed Angela Peters by saying that anyone who knows him knows he would never do anything like she described. He called Loraine a good mother, and said he could understand how her pain over the loss of their son pushed her to make up these accusations against him. And he showed his only hint of emotion when he addressed Brian Paul’s assertion that he had seen John kill Gabe. According to Ted Jackson, John said he did not know why Brian would make up a story like this. Brian, he said, was Gabe’s best friend and that he had always tried to be like a father to the little boy. John believed the child had to be confused because of the trauma of that night.

  Reginald Chambliss didn’t spend too much time cross-examining John. His case was already so strong that trying to break John on the witness stand could work against him, especially if John didn’t break. Ted said, instead, Chambliss asked Phillips that if all these testimonies against him were inaccurate, why didn’t he press his attorney to more fiercely cross-examine them? John said, “The truth will always prevail,” or something like that. Chambliss followed up by saying, “Don’t you realize that your failure to challenge these witnesses only makes you look guilty.” John didn’t deviate from his script. He went back to saying, “I have nothing to hide. I am innocent. God will make sure the truth prevails.” Ted called it the weakest defense he’d ever seen, especially in a murder case.

  Tuesday was filled with closing remarks from both attorneys and instructions to the jury. The jury started their deliberations on Tuesday, right after lunch. Andy took the rest of the week off so that he could be there when the verdict was read. He didn’t have to wait long. Wednesday morning at eleven, Ted Jackson called. “The jury’s done,” he said. “Court reconvenes at one, if you want to be there.”

  “Does a cat have climbing gear?” Andy said. “Of course, I want to be there.” He hung up the phone, got dressed, and drove to the local liquor store to pick up a bottle of champagne with which to toast the victory. Returning home, he put the champagne on ice, parked his Impala, and drove his patrol car to the Harris County Courthouse in Adamsburg.

  Andy arrived at the courthouse about ten minutes before one. He parked in the police lot and headed through the side entrance. In the hall outside of the courtroom, he ran into Rachel Maris. “So,” he asked, “what do you think are our chances?”

  Rachel broke out into a big grin. “Nothing is ever a slam dunk because you never know what a jury will do, but . . . ,” she said, and made a dunking motion with her right arm.

  “I hope so,” Andy said.

  “
You worry too much. Relax,” she said as she pushed the door to enter the courtroom.

  “I’m trying,” Andy said as he followed her.

  Rachel Maris took her usual spot in the front between the district attorney and Ted Jackson. Ted turned as she sat down and made eye contact with Andy as Andy looked for a seat. He smiled and waved. Andy gave him a nervous wave back. As he did, the bailiff walked in and said, “All rise.” At that, Andy ducked into a spot to his immediate left. He’d hoped to sit on the opposite side of the courtroom, where he could watch John’s face as the verdict was read, but this place would have to do. “Superior Court of Harris County, State of Indiana, is now in session. The Honorable George Houk presiding,” the bailiff said. After the judge took his place behind the bench, he said, “You may be seated.”

  Andy took his seat on the aisle about eight rows behind John Phillips and Donald Edmonds. Edmonds was his usual dapper self, wearing an orange blazer and white pants. John leaned over to his attorney as the jury walked in, placing his arm around his shoulder as if to encourage his court-appointed lawyer. Andy turned his attention from John to the jury as they filed in. He studied each face, looking for a clue as to what they might have decided, but all he saw were looks of relief that this was over.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” Judge Houk asked. Andy could feel his heart beating in his ears.

  “We have, Your Honor,” the jury foreman replied. Later, Andy couldn’t remember if the foreman was a man or a woman. His eyes were glued to John Phillips.

  “Would the defendant please rise,” the judge said. The hair on the back of Andy’s neck stood on end, and his sweat poured off his palms. John Phillips stood up, as did his attorney, whose orange blazer was the same color as the prisoner jumpsuits. John wore a light blue leisure suit.

  “We find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree,” the foreman said. Andy could feel fireworks shoot off from his shoulders. He couldn’t see John Phillips’s face, only his back. That was enough, for now. With the trial over, Andy had already planned on a face-to-face meeting with John Phillips so that he could see his reaction up close and personal. A woman began wailing on the other side of the courtroom. Andy turned and saw that it was Loraine Phillips. She collapsed in her seat and the man next to her wrapped his arms around her and held her up. Andy had never seen him before, but he assumed he must be her newest love interest. A group of people just to Andy’s left also began making noise, but all of them were saying things like, “This ain’t right, this just ain’t right.” Fools, Andy thought.