Deputy DA wants Phillips named a habitual criminal

Kim Smith

Tuesday, June 11, 2002 | 9:35 a.m.

Donald Phillips says he is casino executive Steve Wynn's half-brother.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Abbi Silver says he is a career criminal.

Deputy Public Defender Elizabeth Quillin is stuck in the middle.

On the one hand, Quillin says she has a delusional client trying to secure half of a non-existent $100 million estate.

On the other, Quillin has a candidiate for district attorney trying to put her client away for life.

On Monday Silver filed a motion asking District Judge John McGroarty to declare Phillips a habitual criminal, making him eligible for 20 life sentences if convicted next month. She also filed a motion asking that every letter Phillips wrote Wynn be admitted into evidence.

McGroarty will rule on the letters next week. He will rule on the habitual criminal motion if and when Phillips is convicted.

Phillips was indicted in August on 20 extortion and aggravated stalking charges but has spent the past several months in a mental health facility.

According to grand jury transcripts, Phillips sent 15 letters to Wynn between Sept. 6, 2000, and June 1, 2001, demanding what Phillips contends is his share of an inheritance.

Phillips, who has eight felony convictions on his rap sheet, was declared competent to stand trial last month.

The problem, Quillin said, is that one can be competent and delusional at the same time. A person who is competent need only understand the charges against him and be able to assist his attorney in his own defense.

Phillips can do both, but still insists he is Wynn's half-brother -- a fact flatly denied by Wynn.

Phillips also insists he dated former vice president Al Gore's wife Tipper, is good friends with both of the Clintons, is personally acquainted with country singing star Alan Jackson and is the nephew of the late actor Don Ameche.

In the letters to Wynn, Phillips repeatedly asks Wynn for money. In some letters, he speaks of his love and respect for his brother. In others, he spews vulgarities and threats.

In many of the letters, he refers to a "curse" that kept him from remembering their relationship for so long, ties to the Irish and Italian Mafia and his destiny.

In a September 2000 letter Phillips tells Wynn that the mob mistook another man for him and shot him to death on the same day the Bellagio opened and the same day he was released from a Texas prison.

"I don't know if you have been a part of the people trying to kill me or what," Phillips writes at the beginning of the letter.

Later, Phillips ends the letter by writing, "I want us to be friends Steve, and real brothers. Be cool man and let destiny take place."

A month later, Phillips is irate that he has yet to receive money from Wynn.

The letters continued for months. In some Phillips recalls watching "their" grandfather on national TV looking for a long-lost grandson. In others, he tells Wynn he has met both their brother and their sister.

In March 2001 Phillips tells Wynn that he is sure the rest of their family wouldn't be too happy to learn that he has treated his "long-lost, HIV dying blood brother" so shabbily.

The letters show Phillips got increasingly frustrated as time went on. In a June 2001 letter he wrote, "You are a sorry (expletive) Steve to do this to your blood."

In Phillips' last letter to Wynn -- one month after his indictment -- he tells Wynn that the case would go away if he booked him into a suite at the Bellagio, paid a bail bondsman $250,000 and gave him half of the inheritance.

Quillin said the case is a sad and frustrating one.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that attorneys are prohibited from putting on a defense contrary to what their clients want.

"And my client wholeheartedly 'knows' he is Steve Wynn's long lost brother and that he is entitled to an inheritance their father left him," Quillin said.

So Quillin said she will be asking McGroarty in person for a DNA sample from Wynn.

"Our office is the only barrier between my client and the criminal justice system," Quillin said.