CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Pfizer Inc. will turn over some internal research documents on its anti-depressant drug Zoloft to lawyers defending a 15-year-old South Carolina boy accused of murdering his grandparents.

A Pfizer spokesman said Tuesday the New York-based drug company will comply with a South Carolina Circuit Court judge's order late last week requiring the drug maker to hand over the documents, which contain medical information from clinical trials.

"We'll be doing whatever the court has requested us to do," spokesman Bryant Haskins said.

Lawyers for Christopher Pittman, charged with shooting grandparents Joe and Joy Pittman as they slept in their beds three years ago, believe the documents will help them prove Zoloft led the boy to commit the killings. Andy Vickery, a Houston lawyer who has represented plaintiffs in numerous lawsuits against anti-depressant manufacturers and is providing free counsel in Pittman's defense, said the ruling may also pave the way to make public some reports of adverse reactions to Zoloft that have remained confidential under settlements of civil cases.

Vickery said the boy had been prescribed Zoloft off-label -- meaning for a condition not indicated on the drug's label -- by a family doctor weeks before the killings, and his dose was boosted only days before.

He said a state forensics psychiatrist has testified she believes the Zoloft caused Pittman to become psychotic and hear voices telling him to kill. Vickery said defense lawyers also expect to call a former Food and Drug Administration psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Kapit.

"This is a criminal case that will be tried in the very near future, so it's very likely that this very damning internal, what I call dirty laundry, will be aired in public, and it will become a part of the public domain finally after nearly 10 years of battling Pfizer," Vickery said.

But Pfizer's spokesman said the information subpoenaed by defense attorneys was confidential medical information on patients, and he disputed the idea that the records are relevant to the Pittman trial.

"There's no evidence that suggests the use of Zoloft could lead to violent behavior," Haskins said.

Pfizer's lawyer argued unsuccessfully against the ruling last week, reportedly telling the judge other courts have rejected using the documents because they can be taken out of context or be inconclusive.

Haskins noted that the judge's ruling doesn't necessarily mean the documents will become public, as the judge would have to admit them as evidence. Defense lawyers already have many of the documents requested as a result of their previous work in civil cases, but Pfizer expects to hand over the remainder "within a reasonable time," he said.

No trial date has been set, although Vickery expects it could be early next year. The judge is also considering a defense motion to send the case back to juvenile court, but Vickery said Pittman favors a public trial regardless of the venue.

Sales of Zoloft have sagged amid concerns about side effects in children. Zoloft is not specifically approved by the FDA for use in depressed children and adolescents, but it and other antidepressants, including GlaxoSmithKline PLC's Paxil and Wyeth's Effexor, have been prescribed for children "off-label."

An FDA advisory committee in September called for the labels of all antidepressants to get a tough "black box" warning about the risk of increased suicidal tendencies in young people.

Vickery said a jury in California earlier this year found a man innocent of attempted murder after a neuropsychiatrist testified the man had an adverse reaction to Zoloft. That case made use only of publicly available information about Zoloft, Vickery said.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.