However, serious evidence of jury misconduct surfaced soon after the trial ended. One juror admitted to having discussed the case with a bartender during a break in deliberations and according to the bartender, the juror expressed a belief that Christopher was guilty and the same juror also admitted to having spoken about the case with his wife.
Jurors are repeatedly warned to not discuss the case with anyone but the other jurors during deliberations. They are also instructed to not form an opinion about the guilt of a defendant until they listen to all the evidence and receive juror instructions from the judge.
By discussing the case with a bartender and his wife, and specifically expressing a belief that Christopher was guilty, the juror sabotaged his right to a fair trial.
Juror, Roberta Diamond, said that she was "appalled" at the "guilty" verdict. She said she found no evidence whatsoever to overcome the presumption that 12-year- olds do not have the mental capacity to form "criminal intent," and that she found the evidence linking Zoloft to Christopher's actions "compelling."
Soon after the verdict, Ms Diamond contacted Christopher's attorneys and voiced her concerns and as a result, she filed an affidavit that was a key attachment to the defense's second motion for new trial.
Despite all this, the judge in the case refused to grant a new trial and for some odd reason, ordered the identity of the juror who violated his oath in speaking to the bartender and his wife not be disclosed.
Looking back to when he placed on the SSRIs, Christopher says he did not recognize the changes in in his thinking and behavior. That it wasn't until months later after he was completely off the medication, that he could see how bizarre his actions were.
The people who actually knew this child best described him at trial as being shy, loving and gentle before he was placed on SSRIs. And according to Christopher himself, when the dosage of Zoloft was increased everything got worse. "I snapped," he says.
"It made me hate everyone," he recalls. The smallest things would make him blow up, he said.
He started getting into fights, when before he would always avoid fights. "I just hated the whole world for no apparent reason," Christopher says.
If family members had been alerted to watch for the side effect of Zoloft, the signs of violence and mania were there. For instance, Christopher, who by all accounts had never threatened or harmed another human being, choked a 2nd grade student on the school bus shortly before he killed his grandparents.
Christopher's memory of what happened the night his grandparents died is: "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 until I got up, got the gun, and I went upstairs and I pulled the trigger."
According to Christopher, the whole thing was like watching a show on TV. "You know what is going to happen," he says, "but you can't do anything to stop it."
"All you can do is just watch it in fright," he recalls.
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