CHARLESTON, S.C. — When 12-year-old Christopher Pittman attempted suicide in 2001, doctors put him on a five-week regimen of Zoloft and another antidepressant. Christopher did not try to kill himself again, but his lawyers claim the drugs caused him to kill the two most important people in his life — his paternal grandparents.

Joe Pittman, 66, and Joy Pittman, 62, were asleep in their rural Chester County, S.C., home on Nov. 28, 2001, when Christopher took a pump-action shotgun and killed the retired couple. The boy then set the house on fire and fled in the family car.

"I took everything out on my grandparents, who I loved so very much," Christopher wrote in a letter that his father, Joe Pittman Jr., read at a federal Food and Drug Administration hearing last year. "When I was lying in my bed that night, I couldn't sleep because my voice in my head kept echoing through my mind, telling me to kill them."

As Christopher Pittman goes on trial Monday, his case is refocusing a national debate on the dangers of antidepressant use. Christopher's lawyers, along with an expert on criminal liability for people who take prescribed medicines, are expected to use the proceedings as a bullhorn.

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They will concede that Christopher pulled the trigger. The defense, however, is expected to call a team of experts and use pharmaceutical company documents to convince jurors that the antidepressants Christopher was taking made him unable to discern right from wrong when he took the lives of the people he called "Pop-Pop" and "Nanna."

The defense will also claim that Pfizer knew as early as the 1980s that Zoloft could cause a patient to develop homicidal urges.

The Rock Hill Herald reported in December that the defense had a long-secret portion of a 1983 Pfizer document that reported that one patient had been taken off Zoloft during a clinical trial. The portion of the report that had been in the public domain from 1983 to 2004 indicated only that the patient was taken off the drug because of treatment failure and nausea, anorexia and painful urination.

The newly released section further explained that the same patient had developed thoughts of killing himself and others, according to the paper. "[The patient] began to verbalize feelings of killing other people and then himself," a physician involved with the 1983 clinical trial wrote at the time.

Prosecutors have said very little publicly about Christopher's defense strategy. They have, however, insisted that Christopher not be freed on bail and that he be tried as an adult. A judge agreed that the nature of the crimes justifies trying the now-15-year-old as an adult.

Prosecutors are expected to highlight Christopher's previous brushes with authorities, school officials and family members to argue that he showed antisocial behavior before being prescribed antidepressants and after he stopped taking them.

Lawyers on both sides of the case were not immediately available for comment.

"A bond hearing last month exposed 38 incidents involving sweet, quiet, laid-back Christopher since the murders, including shouting obscenities at staff and seemingly trying to fashion a jailhouse weapon by sharpening both ends of a toothbrush," David Verhaagen, a licensed psychologist, wrote in a Jan. 18 opinion piece in the Charlotte, N.C., Observer.

Opening statements are set to begin Monday afternoon before Charleston County Circuit Judge Daniel Pieper.

The judge has previously indicated that he will allow the defense to present evidence about the possible adverse effects of antidepressants in some patients, but reminded the attorneys that the trial is a criminal proceeding, not a civil action against pharmaceutical companies.

The trial is expected to last two weeks. If convicted of murder and arson, Christopher Pittman faces up to life in prison.