Conviction upheld in 'Zoloft defense' case
Two jurors complained they felt misled, pressured
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (CNN) -- A judge on Friday upheld the conviction of a boy who killed his grandparents, despite closed-door testimony of two jurors in the case who said they felt misled and pressured during deliberations.
Judge Daniel Pieper cited previous South Carolina higher-court rulings that said a juror's misunderstanding of the law is not sufficient grounds to overturn a guilty verdict.
Christopher Pittman, now 16, was sentenced in February to 30 years in prison for the shotgun slayings of his grandparents as they slept in bed 3 1/2 years ago.
The two-week trial in Charleston this past February drew widespread national attention when the defense contended the prescription anti-depressant Zoloft had clouded the child's mind and driven him into an uncontrollable rage.
In a March 1 hearing prompted by another juror's misconduct, Judge Pieper discovered the jury confusion when he called in jurors for a closed-door inquiry into whether they were improperly influenced.
Two female jurors said they felt they had to go along with a majority decision that Christopher was guilty, even though neither believed that way.
One woman, identified as Juror C, told the judge "she and a few other jurors did not want to render a guilty verdict" but "the rest of the jury was bothering her to vote guilty" because that was the majority's vote and the others told her the decision had to be unanimous.
Another woman, called Juror D, told Judge Pieper she "never decided that he was guilty" but voted that way in the end because of an "understanding that everybody had to be in the same agreement."
When the jury returned its verdict February 15, the judge asked each juror in open court whether that guilty verdict was indeed his or her verdict. All of the jurors, including C and D, answered yes.
In his decision Friday to uphold Christopher's conviction, Pieper cited two South Carolina Supreme Court rulings. Pieper said, in effect, that such an answer "cures any doubt regarding whether that juror assented to the verdict."
Yet the women's subsequent testimony may provide grounds for a defense appeal to South Carolina's higher courts to try to overturn the verdict; both women testified that they were not prepared to find Christopher guilty under the circumstances.
The prosecution argued Christopher, then 12, shot his grandparents in their sleep outside Chester, South Carolina, in November 2001 after his grandfather chastised him over a school bus fight.
The post-trial hearing was prompted when one juror, Steven Platt, who had been outspoken in rejecting the Zoloft defense, was discovered to have discussed the case with a bartender while the jury was still deliberating. (Background)
The bartender testified Platt told him "he thought the young man was guilty" on the night before the jury returned its verdict. The jury was not sequestered.
All the other jurors testified Platt did not mention that conversation in their deliberations and they were not affected by it.
However, three other jurors said Platt did mention talking with his wife about the case -- also forbidden under jury instructions. Platt conceded to the judge his wife was troubled by Pittman's young age at the time of the crime, but said he told her there was nothing the jury could do about that.
Juror C remembered Platt had said he and his wife did not "agree on the same thing about the case." But Pieper, in his ruling, found that all of the jurors involved said they were not affected by any such conversation.
Pieper ruled, "The law is very clear," that without a question as to fundamental fairness, "concepts of finality must prevail." He denied the defense motions on all the grounds raised.
