Teen Who Said Zoloft Drove Him to Kill Is Convicted

A 15-year-old boy who claimed the antidepressant Zoloft drove him to kill his grandparents and burn their house down was found guilty of murder Tuesday and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The jury took six hours to reject Christopher Pittman’s defense that he was “involuntarily intoxicated” by the drug and could not be held responsible for the crime.

Pittman was 12 in 2001 when he killed his grandparents, Joe Pittman, 66, and Joy Pittman, 62, with a pump-action shotgun as they slept in their rural home, then set the house on fire and drove off in their car. He was charged as an adult.

Pittman hung his head as the verdict was read.

“I know it’s in the hands of God. Whatever he decides on, that’s what it’s going to be,” he said quietly, just before Judge Danny Pieper handed down the sentence. Pittman had faced life in prison.

About a month before the slayings, Pittman was hospitalized after threatening to kill himself. He was prescribed the antidepressant Paxil and was later put on Zoloft.

A psychiatrist testified for the defense that the Zoloft was to blame for the killings, and a former Food and Drug Administration official told the jury that the crime was an angry, rash, manic act that was “chemically induced.”

But prosecutors called the Zoloft defense a smokescreen, saying the boy knew what he was doing. Prosecutor Barney Giese said Pittman was simply angry at his grandparents for disciplining him for choking a younger student on a school bus.

And Giese reminded jurors how the boy carried out the killings -- shooting his grandfather in the mouth and his grandmother in her head while both lay sleeping.

“I don’t care how old he is. That is as malicious a killing -- a murder -- as you are ever going to find,” the prosecutor said. He pointed to Pittman’s statement to police in which he said his grandparents “deserved it.”

Pfizer Inc., the manufacturer of Zoloft, said in a statement after the verdict: “Zoloft didn’t cause his problems, nor did the medication drive him to commit murder. On these two points, both Pfizer and the jury agree.”

Zoloft is the most widely prescribed antidepressant in the United States, Pfizer said.