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BROCKTON, Massachusetts (WBZ) — A Brockton mother who was sentenced to life in prison for killing her two young sons in 2018 will get a new trial.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court vacated the December 2022 conviction of Latarsha Sanders Thursday, saying Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan was wrong when he would not allow the jury to hear about her troubling mental illness while she was awaiting trial in prison and in a state psychiatric hospital.
Sullivan is currently overseeing the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. Clancy admits she killed her three children in their Duxbury home in January 2023. She’s charged with first-degree murder. Her attorney said Clancy was experiencing extreme postpartum psychosis.
Sanders admitted to stabbing her sons to death in February 2018. Her defense attorney argued that she was insane at the time.
According to the ruling, the jury never saw thousands of pages of medical records compiled after the murders, where doctors found she suffered from “hallucinations” and “paranoid schizophrenia [that was] undetected and untreated for decades.”
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said her boys, 8-year-old Edson “Marlon” Brito and 5-year-old La’son Brito, died in a “ritualistic incident” and that Sanders practiced Voodoo.
The jury deliberated for about four hours and found her guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. She was automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole under Massachusetts law.
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said her boys, 8-year-old Edson “Marlon” Brito and 5-year-old La’son Brito, died in a “ritualistic incident” and that Sanders practiced Voodoo.
The jury deliberated for about four hours and found her guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. She was automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole under Massachusetts law.
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said her boys, 8-year-old Edson “Marlon” Brito and 5-year-old La’son Brito, died in a “ritualistic incident” and that Sanders practiced Voodoo.
The jury deliberated for about four hours and found her guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. She was automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole under Massachusetts law.
“There is no doubt the defendant committed these incomprehensible crimes. The sole issue before a Superior Court jury was whether she lacked criminal responsibility,” the justices on the state’s highest court wrote in their ruling Thursday.
“We hold that the exclusion of the defendant’s relevant medical records relating to the diagnoses or treatment of mental illness constituted prejudicial error, and as a result, the defendant is entitled to a new trial.”
Sanders was convicted one month before Clancy killed her children.
“Mental illness and criminal responsibility issues have been around since we’ve had a criminal justice system,” WBZ-TV legal analyst Jennifer Roman said. “Now we just talk about mental illness more.”
The Plymouth County District Attorney’s office is currently reviewing the SJC’s opinion and “determining our next steps going forward.”
“It is our duty as a prosecutors’ office to be a voice for victims of crime, like Marlon and La’Son Brito, and we will continue to do so in their memory,” a spokesperson for the Plymouth DA said.
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