Before Lindsay Clancy, There Was Latarsha Sanders

A memorial in front of the Brockton, Massachusetts home where Marlon and La’son Brito were found dead, from the article ‘Torment and Trial’. Photo: Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe staff

After 18 hours of deliberation, jurors are deadlocked on their decision to convict or not convict Lindsay Clancy — the Massachusetts mother facing murder charges for the strangulation death of her three children.

The trial, which spanned more than four weeks, has become a national flashpoint on postpartum psychosis, criminal responsibility and what juries owe defendants who are mentally ill.

Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham has been covering the trial closely, arguing it has effectively put two defendants on the docket: Clancy and “our broken mental health system.” She’s also written about the near-impossible pressure on jurors given the media circus around the case.

Those are the same questions Abraham spent seven chapters unpacking in her 2025 series on Latarsha Sanders — a Brockton mother convicted of killing her two sons in strikingly similar circumstances, but never received anything like the public sympathy Clancy has.

We interviewed Abraham about that series and what it revealed: Juries convicted the defendants in insanity-defense cases 36 out of 41 times since 1990, and race and class shape which mothers get treated as sick versus evil.

Revisit our interview with Abraham here.