Judge William Sullivan, who drew national attention earlier this month after declaring a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder case, also presided over another closely watched that a retired Massachusetts judge says would look dramatically different if retried.
The last month vacated the murder convictions of Brockton mother Latarsha Sanders, ruling jurors were improperly prevented from seeing psychiatric records central to her insanity defense and ordering 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 Fox News Digital.
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Sullivan, who presided over Sanders’ 2022 trial and later sentenced her to two concurrent life terms without parole, has returned to the national spotlight following the closely watched Clancy trial, which ended in a mistrial after jurors deadlocked over whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three children. Like Sanders, Clancy admitted killing her children but argued she lacked criminal responsibility because of mental illness.
“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.”
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The justices concluded Sanders was entitled to a new trial because jurors never saw medical records documenting diagnoses and treatment of mental illness that were relevant to the only issue disputed at trial: whether she lacked criminal responsibility.
Lu said the ruling does far more than simply order another trial.
“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 o
