Retired Judge Says Psychosis Evidence Could Transform Another Clancy-Related Murder Case

Judge William Sullivan, who drew national attention earlier this month when he declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder case, also oversaw another high-profile child-killing trial that a retired Massachusetts judge says could unfold very differently the second time around.

Last month, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court threw out the murder conviction of Brockton mother Latarsha Sanders. The court found that jurors had been improperly denied access to psychiatric records critical to her insanity defense and ordered a new trial.

“They ordered a new trial which will fundamentally change the way the case is going to be tried,” retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Jack Lu told News Media.

Sullivan presided over Sanders’ 2022 trial and later sentenced her to two concurrent life terms without the possibility of parole. He has since returned to the national spotlight through the closely watched Clancy trial, which ended in a mistrial after jurors could not reach a verdict on whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three children. As in the Sanders case, Clancy admitted killing her children but maintained that mental illness left her without criminal responsibility.

“There is no doubt the defendant committed these incomprehensible crimes,” Justice David Gaziano wrote for the unanimous court in Sanders’ case. “The sole issue before a Superior Court jury was whether she lacked criminal responsibility.”

The justices ruled that Sanders deserved a new trial because the jury did not see medical records detailing her mental health diagnoses and treatment. Those documents were relevant to the only question contested at trial: whether she lacked criminal responsibility.

Lu said the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision amounts to far more than a routine order for a retrial.

“Thousands of pages of mental health records will be admitted … and the jury’s gonna get it all,” he said.

Lu cautioned against judging Sullivan’s decision with the benefit of hindsight.

“The trial judge did an excellent job … but now I’m a great Monday morning quarterback just like everybody else,” Lu said, explaining that the evidentiary issue was unusually difficult before the SJC clarified the law.

Sanders admitted killing her sons, 8-year-old Edson “Marlon” Brito and 5-year-old La’Son Brito, but argued she was legally insane at the time of the attacks.

Her attorneys contended she was suffering from severe mental illness and psychosis, while prosecutors argued she appreciated the wrongfulness of her actions despite bizarre statements she made before and after the killings.

According to evidence summarized by the Supreme Judicial Court, Sanders had become consumed by conspiracy theories involving the Illuminati and expressed fears about voodoo before the killings.

After the deaths, investigators said she gave police multiple conflicting accounts before eventually telling detectives the stabbings were part of a “ritual” tied to voodoo and the Illuminati.

At trial, Sanders’ defense called a clinical neuropsychologist who testified she was “grossly psychotic” at the time of the killings and suffered from a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder.

The expert based that opinion in part on thousands of pages of psychiatric treatment records from prison and a state psychiatric hospital.

Those are the records Lu said a future jury would likely hear if prosecutors pursue another trial.

The Supreme Judicial Court said that was an error, concluding the excluded records documented repeated observations of paranoia, hallucinations, delusional thinking and schizophrenia-spectrum diagnoses that formed the medical foundation of Sanders’ defense.

“We hold that the exclusion of the MCI-Framingham and WRCH medical records documenting the defendant’s post-arrest diagnoses or treatment of mental illness … impermissibly stripped the sole defense ‘of the medical foundation that supported it,'” the court wrote. “The defendant is entitled to a new trial.”

Lu said the opinion should not be interpreted as a determination that Sanders was legally insane or wrongly convicted. Instead, he described it as the resolution of a difficult evidentiary question that changes what evidence jurors would be permitted to consider if the case is retried.

During oral arguments before the Supreme Judicial Court, Sanders’ attorney, Robert Shaw, argued the trial judge’s exclusion of medical evidence deprived his client of “a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense,” FOX 25 in Boston reported.

Assistant Plymouth County District Attorney Melissa Johnson countered that Sanders showed no documented psychotic behavior for months after the killings and that the records were properly excluded, the station reported.

The justices also addressed two issues that would likely shape any future trial.

First, they said prosecutors could refer to Sanders describing herself as “evil” because the statements were relevant to whether she appreciated the moral wrongfulness of her actions, so long as the argument remained tied to that legal issue rather than serving as a personal attack.

However, the court found prosecutors improperly suggested Sanders may have borrowed elements of her story from episodes of “Law & Order: SVU,” ruling there was no evidence supporting that theory.

The ruling vacates Sanders’ convictions and sends the case back to Plymouth Superior Court for a new trial.

An overturned conviction does not clear Sanders of the charges, Lu said.

“It just means you have to do it all over again,” he said.

News Media has reached out to Sullivan, Sanders’ attorney and the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office for comment.