A Massachusetts high court ruling is drawing attention to how courts handle severe mental illness in cases where mothers kill their children — and to jury composition after a jury with 11 White members and one Black member deadlocked earlier this month in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy.
In August, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts overturned the 2022 murder conviction of Latarsha Sanders, a Black woman who fatally stabbed her sons, Marlon, 8, and La’Son, 5, in 2018 at their Brockton home. The court ordered a new trial for Sanders, who had not been diagnosed with a mental illness before her children’s deaths.
During her trial, family members said they had noticed changes in Sanders’ behavior, including paranoid fears that a secret society was trying to kill her and her children. After her arrest, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. An expert witness concluded she had been “grossly psychotic” during the killings.
Wide social chasm
Sanders’ attorneys argued that she lacked criminal responsibility because she was experiencing a psychotic episode. But she was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder on Dec. 27, 2022, and received two mandatory life sentences without parole.
Four weeks later, on Jan. 24, 2023, Clancy, who is White, fatally strangled her three children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months — in their Duxbury home. Clancy had sought treatment for months as her mental health worsened.
Judge William F. Sullivan, who presided over both cases, allowed jurors to see Clancy’s mental health records. Her lawyers argued that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed her children.
Her case ended in a mistrial Sept. 4 when jurors split 11-1 over whether to find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
The two cases, heard in the same Massachusetts courtroom, have drawn attention to how courts weigh maternal mental illness and race.
The women’s hometowns also differ sharply. Brockton, with about 106,000 residents, is just over 34% Black and about 28% White. Its median household income is about $80,000, and its poverty rate is 13.5%.
Duxbury, a coastal town of roughly 16,500 residents, is 93% White, with a Black population under 1%. Its median household income is about $177,000 — more than double Brockton’s.
Black women at higher risk
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that roughly 1 in 8 women report postpartum depression symptoms after delivery.
According to the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health, postpartum depression and anxiety affect Black women at more than twice the rate of White women nationally. Black women also report perinatal post-traumatic stress disorder at roughly four times the rate of other groups and are twice as likely to report postpartum suicidal thoughts, yet are only about half as likely as White women to begin treatment.
During Sanders’ trial, Sullivan ruled that the defense could not introduce her post-arrest mental health records unless prosecutors first raised the issue. They did not, so jurors never heard that evidence before finding her guilty.
But the state’s highest court unanimously ruled in August that excluding those records “impermissibly stripped” Sanders’ defense “of the medical foundation that supported it.”
‘Fundamentally unfair’
The attorney handling Sanders’ appeal called her trial “a fundamentally unfair legal proceeding” for “a mother who was suffering from profound mental illness and experiencing a psychotic state completely untethered from reality.”
In Clancy’s case, defense attorneys used her mental health records to argue that she should not be held criminally responsible for killing her children. Eleven jurors favored that verdict, but one held out.
The jury’s racial makeup drew attention in traditional and social media.
Juror Paula Devlin told Gayle King on “CBS Mornings” that the panel consisted of nine women and three men — 11 White jurors and one Black juror. Devlin, who favored finding Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, confirmed that the holdout was a Black man.
The holdout juror, Michael Desronvil, has since disputed other jurors’ accounts of the deliberations. In a statement released through a representative, he said he believed the evidence showed Clancy knew what she was doing and had planned the killings.
Clancy’s attorneys have asked the court to dismiss the case on double jeopardy grounds. A hearing is set for Sept. 29. Prosecutors have not said whether they will retry her.
If Sanders is retried, her attorneys are expected to argue that she was not criminally responsible for killing her children by reason of insanity. Such a verdict could result in her commitment to a secure psychiatric facility rather than prison.