02:12 PM EST on Saturday, February 12, 2005

By BRUCE SMITH / Associated Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Christopher Pittman double murder trial has all the elements that have kept satellite trucks from national networks parked outside the courthouse in Charleston's historic district for two weeks.

It's a story of a 12-year-old who kills his grandparents, burns their house and drives off in their car. It's also a story about a youth on the anti-depressant Zoloft and a question of whether he knew right from wrong at the time of the November 2001 slayings. But the case is also breaking new legal ground in South Carolina.

"There is no case in South Carolina that addresses involuntary intoxication by prescription drugs," Circuit Court Judge Danny Pieper said after testimony concluded Friday and attorneys discussed the charge to the jury.

The jury of nine women and three men will get the case Monday following closing arguments and Pieper's charge which will include instructions on involuntary intoxication.

The defense acknowledges Pittman, now 15, shot Joe Pittman, 66, and his wife Joy, 62, in their Chester County home but didn't know right from wrong at the time because his mind was clouded by the anti-depressant.

The prosecution contends he was simply angry that his grandparents disciplined him and so shot them and then burned their house.

South Carolina has insanity defenses, which include additional options for a jury to find a defendant not guilty by reason of insanity as well as guilty but mentally ill.

But neither really fits this case, defense attorney Andy Vickery told the judge.

The defense has presented witnesses that Pittman was manic at the time of the slayings because of the Zoloft "The only evidence in this case of any mental defect is one that was drug-induced and which when away when the drug went away," Vickery said.

"If you look at it from a policy standpoint, it would not make sense to have a guilty but mentally ill verdict," Vickery added.

That could lead, he said, to people being locked up locked up or treated for mental illness "for simply taking their medicine." There is little to go on in South Carolina law.

Vickery gave the example of someone slipping a drug into another's drink who then commits a crime because they were involuntarily intoxicated.

In that case, he said, "it doesn't make any sense to relegate you to treatment or the penitentiary for the rest of your life."

"There is no law in this state on this subject," the judge said. "It seems to turn the whole medical system on its side if you can't rely on the medication your doctor prescribes."

Pieper said the state law seems to require the choice of the insanity verdicts but would also include a charge so jurors would have to meet three tests for finding involuntary intoxication.

First, they would have to find the defendant did not know or have reason to know the drug had an intoxicating effect. Second, the defendant would have had to have taken the drug under the direction of a physician.

Third, the jury would have to then conclude that, as a result of the involuntary intoxication, the defendant didn't know the difference between legal and moral right and wrong when the crime was committed.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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