FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (February 15, 2005)

PITTMAN CONVICTED AND SENTENCED AS AN ADULT; NEW TRIAL GRANTED FOR BERNAICHE

The jury in 12 year old Christopher Pittman's case apparently all believed that his behavior was affected by Zoloft on November 28, 2001, when he killed his grandparents, and, yet, astoundingly, still found that the State had rebutted the presumption that he was too young to have criminal intent and had established beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted with "malice aforethought." They found him guilty. After the verdict, Judge Danny Pieper sentenced him to 30 years without parole, which is the minimum sentence allowed under South Carolina law.

The JusticeSeekers will be filing a motion in the next few days asking the judge to reduce the sentence to a maximum of imprisonment to age 21, which is the standard for juvenile offenders. The motion will be based on recent United States Supreme Court cases interpreting the "unreasonable punishments" clause of the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Other post-trial motions, and an appeal, are highly likely.

Meanwhile, in a touch of irony, on the same day as the Pittman verdict, Judge Deborrah Thomas in Detroit granted another Christopher, i.e. Christopher Bernaiche, a new trial. Bernaiche, who was bipolar, was convicted of murder. A few days before the incident his Prozac was doubled. Andy Vickery was also lead trial counsel for Bernaiche. Although we have not yet seen Judge Thomas's Order, according to news reports it is based on that portion of our motion for new trial which argued about the fact that, throughout the defense case, the prosecution simultaneously (a) ridiculed the defense as one based on "junk science," while (b) holding a memo in their briefcase from their own expert witness which acknowledged the link between Prozac and other SSRI drugs and mania and other harbingers of violence.