WBUR News16%
Mass. high court orders new trial for Brockton mother convicted of killing her sons 16%
By Ally Jarmanning11%
8/6/2026, 6:39:02 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 10 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Emotion, and False Dilemma, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 18.8% saturation with 70 hits. Analysis detected 288 faulty-reasoning hits from 372 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 24.5% and a BS Rank of 16% (25,803 of 30,584 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 84.40% of the article peer group.
A Brockton mother convicted of killing her two sons should get a new trial because the jury did not have access to her entire troubling psychiatric history, the state's highest court ruled Thursday.
Attorneys for Latarsha Sanders had argued a so-called insanity defense during her 2022 trial, claiming she lacked criminal responsibility because she was in the throes of a psychotic episode when she stabbed her children, 8-year-old Edson "Marlon" Brito and 5-year-old La'Son Brito.
The jury disagreed and convicted her on two counts of first-degree murder, which carry a mandatory life sentences.
The jury did not have access to thousands of pages of medical records collected over four years while Sanders was awaiting trial.
Doctors found she suffered from paranoia and schizophrenia that was "undetected and untreated for decades."
Trial Judge William F.
Sullivan had ruled those records inadmissible, so the jury never saw them.
But on Thursday, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled that was a key error warranting a new trial.
"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," Justice Frank Gaziano wrote in Thursday's decision.
Sanders did not have a documented history of mental illness before the murders.
But family said she exhibited bizarre behavior leading up to the killings.
Sanders had become obsessed with a secret society called "the Illuminati," that she feared was out to get her and her children.
The Sanders case was prosecuted by the office of Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz, who is also pursuing first-degree murder charges against another mother accused of killing her children, Lindsay Clancy.
That trial is currently underway.
Clancy has admitted to killing her three children, but her attorney, Kevin Reddington, has argued she has experienced postpartum psychosis and is not criminally liable in their deaths.
If convicted, she would not go free but rather be sent to a state psychiatric hospital until it's determined she can live safely in the community.
Sullivan, the same judge who oversaw the Sanders trial, is presiding over Clancy's trial.
Speakers
1speaker11%attributed speech330writer words
Selected voice
0%flagged-word coverageJustice Frank Gaziano
42 attributed words100% of attributed speech74% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.