BY DARRELL HALEN

A Windham man went on trial this week, accused of breaking two dozen of his infant son’s bones.

A jury hearing the case at Rockingham County Superior Court in Brentwood will decide if Gurrie Fandozzi II, 41, is guilty of 24 charges of first degree assault. He has pleaded not guilty. The trial began Monday, Nov. 5.

In August 2006, doctors discovered that the boy, then 6 months old, had suffered fractures to his spine, arms, legs, ribs and skull.

The baby was brought to a Boston hospital after emergency workers responded to a call from Fandozzi’s 20 Squire Armour Road home reporting that the child wasn’t breathing.

The boy is now healing and living with his mother and sister, according to the WMUR Web site.

The jury will not hear all the evidence that Assistant County Attorney Patricia Conway, the prosecutor in the case, had hoped to bring out in court.

Judge Tina Nadeau, in late October, ruled on 16 motions that had been filed in court, siding with Fandozzi’s lawyer, Steven Shandallah, in some of them.

For  example, the jury will not hear what the boy’s 4-year-old sister told child advocates after police began investigating the case. Nadeau ruled that the interview is inadmissible hearsay.

She did, however, leave open the possibility that specific statements made by the girl could be entered if circumstances change during the trial.

The jury won’t hear from the girl at all. Earlier this year, Nadeau ruled she is not competent to testify.

Court filings by Conway depict the defendant, who previously practiced law in Connecticut, as out of work, struggling financially, and unhappy with his family life and with being a stay-at-home father.

“The defendant had a number of stressors in his life which caused him to be unhappy,” Conway wrote in one of her filings. “Although the defendant probably did not mean to break a number of bones in his infant’s body, he essentially couldn’t handle all of the stress and took it out on his baby.”

The jury will not hear from a couple, former friends of Fandozzi, who would have testified that he seemed to be very angry, and became aggressive and argumentative.

Nadeau ruled that she was not persuaded by Conway’s argument that evidence about his personality change is relevant to his motive in allegedly abusing his son.

Conway will be able to present evidence about Fandozzi’s strained relationship with his in-laws.

Nadeau ruled that evidence about the relationship shows proof of his state of mind at the time of the abuse.

And Conway can also bring evidence about the defendant’s strained relationship with his wife, Tammy Fandozzi.

Fandozzi wanted to prevent prosecutors from doing so, arguing the evidence is not relevant and could be prejudicial.

“The defendant’s ability to control himself is highly probative of how he handled the pressures of caring for a newborn and is relevant to whether he acted recklessly at the time,” Nadeau wrote.

Tammy Fandozzi does not face charges in the case.

Nadeau also denied Shandallah’s motion to exclude testimony from Dr. Alice W. Newton, a pediatrician affiliated with Boston Children’s Hospital, about the location, cause and age of the boy’s broken bones.

Shadallah had argued that because Newton is neither a radiologist nor an orthopedic doctor, she lacks the expertise to identify broken bones, and therefore, her testimony would be wholly based on the opinions of another doctor, Paul Kleinman.

“Dr. Newton has the appropriate knowledge to evaluate how another doctor’s reading of (the boy’s) X-rays relates to what she knows about the appearance of a child’s bones when they are broken, healing or intact,” Nadeau wrote.

While Kleinman may testify about the severity of the injuries, he will not be allowed to share with the jury that the injuries are among the 10 worst cases of child abuse he has seen.

And Newton will not be allowed to share that the name of the group she is part of at the hospital is the Child Protection Team.     

The jury will also not be told disciplinary action was taken against Fandozzi by the Connecticut Bar Association. The matter is too attenuated to have relevance to the abuse that occurred in 2006 and could prejudice the jury, Nadeau ruled. The state argued a possible legal malpractice suit added stress in Fandozzi’s life.

Prosecutors will be allowed to call to the witness stand an auto mechanic about what he saw when Fandozzi brought the family’s cars to a garage to be inspected in late July 2006.

The mechanic will testify that Fandozzi took his daughter outside, leaving his son in the car. The boy, dressed in pants and a long sleeve shirt, did not respond when the mechanic spoke to the baby.

The state argues in the days before his hospitalization showed the baby was despondent and unresponsive and rebuts claims he was happy and well in the days before being admitted to the hospital.

“Testimony about the defendant’s differing treatment of the two children is relevant to explain the defendant’s  motivation in harming one, but not the other,” Nadeau wrote.