Massachusetts SJC Orders New Murder Trial After Exclusion of Psychiatric Records in Commonwealth v. Sanders
On August 6, 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered a new trial in Commonwealth v. Latarsha L. Sanders, SJC-13552, a Brockton murder case in which the only real dispute at trial was whether the defendant was criminally responsible when she killed her two young sons.
There was no dispute that Sanders committed the killings. The question was why.
The defense maintained that Sanders was suffering from a severe psychotic illness and, because of that illness, lacked the substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of what she was doing or to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law.
A defense neuropsychologist supported that conclusion. He had spent hours interviewing and testing Sanders and had reviewed thousands of pages of psychiatric records generated after her arrest. Those records documented hallucinations, paranoia, delusional thinking, bizarre behavior, psychiatric hospitalization, and diagnoses within the schizophrenia spectrum.
The jury, however, never saw the records.
The trial judge excluded them and severely limited what the defense expert could tell the jury about their contents.
The SJC concluded that this was prejudicial error. Because criminal responsibility was the sole contested issue, the Court held that excluding the psychiatric records effectively deprived the defense of the medical foundation supporting its case.
The Court vacated Sanders's two first-degree murder convictions, set aside the verdicts, and ordered a new trial.
The decision is important for Massachusetts criminal defense lawyers well beyond the extraordinary facts of the case. It clarifies the relationship between the rules governing expert testimony and the statutory exception allowing hospital and medical records into evidence. It also demonstrates why psychiatric evidence arising after a crime may be highly relevant to determining a defendant's mental condition when the crime occurred.
The Deaths of Two Children in Brockton
In February 2018, Sanders lived in a third-floor Brockton apartment with several of her children, including eight-year-old Edson "Marlon" Brito and five-year-old La'Son Brito.
Before the killings, family members described Sanders as a loving and caring mother who consistently put her children first. There was no documented history of serious mental illness before February 2018.
There were, however, troubling signs.
Sanders had become increasingly preoccupied with the Illuminati, which she believed was a secret organization that ruled the world, sacrificed human beings, and threatened her family. She watched Internet videos about the group obsessively. At one point she gathered her children and fled to Connecticut because she feared the Illuminati was coming after them.
She was also fearful of voodoo and associated it with the father of one of her older children.
The murders occurred sometime between February 3 and February 5, 2018.
By the morning of February 5, Sanders's behavior had changed dramatically. Family members described her as disheveled and behaving in ways they had never seen before. She accused relatives of planning to poison her young sons. She slapped her mother and later attacked one of her adult daughters.
Emergency medical personnel were eventually called to Sanders's apartment building for what initially appeared to be a medical or behavioral emergency.
Inside the apartment, police made a horrific discovery.
Marlon and La'Son were dead in separate bedrooms. Both children had suffered extensive knife wounds. There was also evidence that Sanders had cleaned portions of the apartment after the killings.
Police recovered several knives, bloodstained bedding, bleach, ammonia, and other physical evidence.
The brutality of the killings was not disputed at trial.
Neither was Sanders's responsibility for causing the children's deaths.
The entire defense rested instead on her mental condition.
Sanders Initially Gave Police Bizarre and Contradictory Explanations
At the hospital and later at the Brockton police station, Sanders initially blamed an older son and that son's father for the murders.
Her accounts were confused and frequently changed.
Eventually, her statements became stranger.
Sanders began discussing rituals, voodoo, the Illuminati, eternal life, and instructions she believed had been communicated to her by other people. She eventually admitted stabbing the children while describing the killings as part of a ritual that she did not fully understand.
She claimed she had been following instructions associated with the Illuminati and believed the ritual had some connection with reaching the afterlife or achieving eternal life.
Police also recovered a notebook from Sanders's vehicle containing unusual references to Satan, evil, money, fame, and her children.
For the Commonwealth, some of Sanders's conduct supported a different conclusion. She had cleaned the apartment. She initially blamed other people. She gave false explanations to investigators.
Those actions, the prosecution argued, suggested that Sanders understood what she had done and appreciated its wrongfulness.
The trial therefore presented a difficult but familiar distinction in criminal responsibility cases.
A person may behave irrationally, bizarrely, or even psychotically without necessarily satisfying the legal standard for lack of criminal responsibility.
The question was not simply whether Sanders had a mental illness.
The question was whether, because of a mental disease or defect, she lacked the legally required capacity at the time of the murders.
Massachusetts's Criminal Responsibility Standard
Massachusetts follows the rule established in Commonwealth v. McHoul.
A defendant is not criminally responsible if, because of a mental disease or defect, the person lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of the conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of the law.
That is a legal standard, not simply a psychiatric diagnosis.
A person can have schizophrenia and remain criminally responsible. Conversely, the absence of a documented psychiatric history before an offense does not necessarily establish that the person was mentally well when the offense occurred.
That distinction became central in Sanders.
The Commonwealth emphasized that Sanders had no documented history of serious mental illness before the killings.
The defense sought to show that the psychiatric evidence developed after her arrest demonstrated that the bizarre behavior surrounding the murders was not merely an invented story or an isolated event. It was part of an identifiable pattern of severe mental illness that continued after she entered custody.
The Defense Expert Concluded Sanders Was Psychotic
At trial, the defense called Dr. Thomas Deters, a clinical neuropsychologist affiliated with McLean Hospital.
His evaluation was extensive.
Deters interviewed Sanders twice for a combined nine hours, conducted approximately seven hours of neuropsychological testing, and reviewed thousands of pages of mental health records.
Those records came principally from MCI-Framingham and the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital, where Sanders later received inpatient psychiatric treatment.
Deters concluded that Sanders was grossly psychotic when she killed her children.
He diagnosed her within the category of schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders.
He found evidence of psychosis not only in her later treatment records but also in her behavior surrounding the murders: the Illuminati beliefs, ritualistic explanations, bizarre treatment of the children's bodies, notebook entries, and other evidence.
Deters did not believe Sanders's later efforts to clean the apartment or mislead police necessarily established that she had been criminally responsible.
Psychotic symptoms, he explained, can fluctuate. A person can become more or less lucid over time.
Ultimately, Deters concluded that because of mental disease, Sanders lacked substantial capacity both to appreciate the criminality of her conduct and to conform her conduct to the law.
That was the defense.
The problem was that the jury was largely prevented from seeing the medical evidence upon which the opinion rested.
Thousands of Pages of Psychiatric Records Were Kept From the Jury
Before and during trial, defense counsel attempted to introduce Sanders's medical records from MCI-Framingham and the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital.
The records had already been produced to the court through the statutory procedure governing hospital records.
The trial judge understandably expressed concern about simply handing the jury thousands of pages of medical documents. He suggested that counsel identify the important portions and address necessary redactions.
That practical concern was not the problem.
The legal ruling that followed was.
The judge ultimately ruled that the records could not be introduced in the manner proposed by the defense and limited Deters's ability to testify about information contained in them. The expert could essentially identify the records as material he had considered, but he could not explain to the jury the important diagnoses, observations, and treatment information supporting his opinion unless the Commonwealth first opened the door on cross-examination.
The prosecutor never did.
As a result, the jury heard Deters's ultimate opinion but did not hear much of the medical evidence that gave the opinion its foundation.
The SJC concluded that the judge had applied the wrong evidentiary principle.
The Important Difference Between Expert-Basis Evidence and Admitted Medical Records
This is the most significant legal portion of Commonwealth v. Sanders.
Massachusetts law limits an expert's ability to use direct examination as a vehicle for introducing otherwise unadmitted information.
An expert can rely on facts or data that are independently admissible even if those facts have not yet been placed before the jury. But the expert ordinarily cannot simply repeat that underlying information to the jury on direct examination.
The reason is straightforward.
Without such a restriction, a lawyer could use an expert as a conduit for hearsay that would otherwise never be admitted.
But that was not what the defense was attempting to do in Sanders.
Defense counsel first tried to introduce the medical records themselves.
That made all the difference.
Once independently admissible evidence has been admitted, an expert may discuss it in explaining the basis for an opinion. At that point, the expert is not smuggling hearsay into the case. The jury already has the evidence.
The trial judge therefore should have first determined whether Sanders's medical records, or relevant portions of them, were independently admissible under Massachusetts law.
Instead, the judge applied the limitation governing an expert's discussion of unadmitted material and used that principle as the basis for excluding the records themselves.
The SJC held that this was error.
Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 233, Section 79
The medical-records issue was governed principally by G.L. c. 233, § 79.
Section 79 creates an important exception to the ordinary rule against hearsay. Hospital records relating to a patient's treatment and medical history may be admitted as substantive evidence because records created for medical purposes carry a recognized degree of reliability.
That does not mean every sentence in every medical record automatically comes into evidence.
The SJC reiterated that the proponent must establish several requirements.
The document must be the type of medical record contemplated by the statute. The information must relate to treatment or medical history. The information must come from a person with the required personal knowledge or medical obligation to provide it. And statements made by outsiders may require an independent hearsay exception or a legitimate nonhearsay purpose.
Ordinary evidentiary principles also continue to apply.
A judge may exclude irrelevant material. A judge may remove cumulative or confusing portions. Voluminous records can be narrowed. Improper second-level hearsay can be redacted.
That is very different, however, from excluding an entire body of relevant psychiatric records because an expert generally cannot recite unadmitted facts on direct examination.
The SJC found no indication that the trial judge had actually conducted the necessary record-by-record or portion-by-portion analysis.
Postarrest Psychiatric Evidence Can Be Relevant to Mental State at the Time of a Crime
The Commonwealth also argued that psychiatric records created months or years after the murders were too remote to shed meaningful light on Sanders's mental condition in February 2018.
The trial judge himself had rejected that argument, and the SJC did not accept remoteness as a justification for the ruling.
The reason becomes apparent from what the records contained.
Following her incarceration, clinicians documented episodes of delusional thinking.
Within months of the murders, Sanders reported paranoid beliefs that people were poisoning her and selling her soul to the devil. Medical personnel documented hallucinations, hyperreligiosity, unusual fixation on dates and numbers, and bizarre behavior.
Later records raised schizophrenia-spectrum diagnoses.
By September 2019, Sanders's behavior had deteriorated sufficiently that MCI-Framingham sought to transfer her to an inpatient psychiatric hospital.
At the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital, clinicians documented pressured and incoherent speech, bizarre affect, psychotic thought processes, and a significant tendency to distort reality under emotional stress.
Records also reflected paranoid beliefs concerning the safety of Sanders's children.
Clinicians eventually described her presentation as consistent with longstanding paranoid schizophrenia, and she was later discharged with a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, depressed type.
None of this automatically established that Sanders lacked criminal responsibility in February 2018.
But that was not the question governing admissibility.
The records tended to corroborate the defense claim that the delusional beliefs and bizarre behavior surrounding the killings were manifestations of genuine mental illness rather than an explanation invented afterward to avoid responsibility.
That evidence was particularly important because the Commonwealth relied heavily on the absence of any documented psychiatric diagnosis before the killings.
The Medical Records Were Not Entirely Favorable to Sanders
The SJC's analysis was not one-sided.
The psychiatric records also contained evidence that helped the Commonwealth.
At various times after the murders, Sanders appeared alert and oriented. Some clinicians documented organized or logical thought processes and no obvious signs of psychosis.
She did not begin reporting auditory hallucinations until several months after the killings.
Some initial diagnoses included conditions such as adjustment disorder and depression rather than schizophrenia.
Those records could have been used to challenge the defense expert.
But the existence of unfavorable evidence did not justify keeping the entire body of medical evidence from the jury.
Indeed, that is ordinarily how trials work.
The defense was entitled to offer relevant admissible evidence supporting criminal irresponsibility. The prosecution remained free to use contradictory portions of the same records to challenge that conclusion.
After reviewing the records itself, the SJC concluded that the evidence supporting Sanders's claim of serious mental illness substantially exceeded the evidence tending to undermine it.
Why the Error Required a New Trial
Not every evidentiary mistake results in a new trial.
The error had been preserved, so the SJC considered whether there was a reasonable possibility that the exclusion of the evidence contributed to the verdict.
Here, the answer was yes.
Criminal responsibility was not one defense among several.
It was the defense.
Sanders admitted causing the deaths. The central question for the jury was whether she was legally responsible for what she had done.
The excluded records contained years of psychiatric observations, diagnoses, symptoms, testing, hospitalization, and treatment supporting the defense expert's conclusion that Sanders suffered from a psychotic disorder.
Yet Deters was permitted to tell the jury little more than that he had reviewed those records and considered them important.
The result was a significant imbalance.
The jury heard the expert's conclusion without much of the clinical evidence that explained why he had reached it.
The SJC concluded that excluding the records impermissibly stripped the criminal-responsibility defense of the medical foundation supporting it.
The convictions therefore could not stand.
The SJC Also Addressed the Prosecutor's Closing Argument
Although the medical-records ruling alone required a new trial, the SJC addressed two portions of the prosecutor's closing argument because the same issues could arise when Sanders is tried again.
The first concerned the prosecutor's repeated references to Sanders and the concept of "evil."
Standing alone, calling a criminal defendant "evil" would present an obvious problem.
Prosecutors cannot use insulting labels simply to provoke an emotional response from jurors. A murder trial must be decided on evidence and law, not disgust toward the accused.
But the SJC concluded that the use of the word was permissible in the particular context of this case.
Sanders herself had repeatedly used the concept of evil in her writings and recorded conversations.
More importantly, the legal definition of criminal responsibility required the jury to determine whether Sanders could appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct.
Her own characterization of herself and her actions therefore had potential relevance to whether she understood their moral significance.
The Court nevertheless cautioned that if the Commonwealth uses the term again at the new trial, it should remain confined to that evidentiary purpose rather than becoming a general attack on Sanders's character.
The Law & Order: SVU Argument Was Improper
The second closing-argument issue produced a different result.
When police recorded the apartment several hours after discovering the bodies, an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was playing on a television.
During cross-examination of Deters, the prosecutor suggested that episodes of the program involved women killing children and claiming voodoo rituals.
The prosecutor then argued in closing that Sanders may have gotten ideas from the television program and used them to manufacture her accounts of hallucinations, rituals, and delusions.
There was a fundamental problem.
There was no evidence that Sanders had watched any such episode.
There was no evidence concerning when the television had been turned on.
There was no evidence establishing that a particular episode involving those subjects had been playing when Sanders was present.
And there was no evidence connecting any Law & Order plot line to Sanders's statements.
The program was simply playing when police later recorded the crime scene.
The SJC held that the argument was improper because a prosecutor may not fill an evidentiary gap with speculation and then ask a jury to treat that speculation as fact.
The distinction is important.
A closing argument may be forceful. A prosecutor may draw reasonable inferences from the evidence. But an inference still needs an evidentiary foundation.
The existence of a television program at a crime scene did not reasonably establish that Sanders had copied her delusions from an episode she had supposedly watched.
Commonwealth v. Sanders Does Not Mean Sanders Was Found Not Criminally Responsible
The SJC's decision should not be misunderstood.
The Court did not find Sanders not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.
It did not decide that she suffered from schizophrenia at the time of the killings.
And it did not determine that her mental illness prevented her from appreciating the wrongfulness of what she did.
Those questions belong to a jury.
The Court's holding is more fundamental.
Sanders was entitled to have the jury decide those questions after considering the admissible evidence bearing on them.
Because the psychiatric records supporting the sole defense were improperly excluded, the first jury did not receive the evidentiary record it should have received.
A new jury will now have to decide the case.
What Commonwealth v. Sanders Means for Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyers
Sanders offers several important lessons for cases involving mental health and criminal responsibility.
First, a psychiatric diagnosis is not the same thing as criminal irresponsibility. Defense counsel must connect the mental disease or defect to the defendant's capacity at the time of the offense.
Second, the absence of a documented psychiatric history before an offense is not necessarily the end of the inquiry. Later treatment records may help establish that strange or delusional conduct surrounding an offense was part of a continuing mental illness.
Third, counsel should distinguish carefully between evidence an expert merely relied upon and evidence that is independently admissible. Massachusetts's limitation on an expert reciting unadmitted facts cannot be treated as a substitute for deciding whether the underlying medical records themselves are admissible.
Fourth, G.L. c. 233, § 79 can be an important tool in a criminal responsibility case. Counsel should identify the significant records, address second-level hearsay, propose appropriate redactions, and make a clear record concerning why particular entries matter.
Fifth, the opinion is a reminder that expert testimony becomes considerably more persuasive when jurors are permitted to see the evidence underlying the opinion. Asking jurors to accept the conclusion of a psychiatrist or psychologist while withholding the clinical history supporting it places the expert in an unnecessarily vulnerable position.
Finally, Sanders illustrates the importance of preservation. Defense counsel repeatedly sought admission of the records and made the importance of the issue clear. That preserved the error and allowed the SJC to review it under the prejudicial-error standard.
The Broader Importance of the Sanders Decision
Criminal responsibility cases are difficult because two propositions can be true at once.
A crime can be horrific.
And the person who committed it can suffer from a mental disease so severe that Massachusetts law does not hold that person criminally responsible.
The emotional force of the first proposition cannot substitute for deciding the second.
That is why the evidentiary rules matter so much in cases like Sanders.
The jury was not being asked whether it approved of what Sanders had done or whether the deaths of two children were unspeakably tragic. Those matters were beyond dispute.
The jury was being asked a narrower legal question about Sanders's mental capacity.
When that is the question, psychiatric records documenting hallucinations, delusions, schizophrenia-spectrum diagnoses, hospitalization, and treatment are not peripheral evidence. They may be among the most important pieces of evidence in the case.
The SJC concluded that the jury deciding Sanders's criminal responsibility should have been permitted to consider that evidence.
For that reason, the convictions were vacated and the case was returned to the Superior Court for a new trial.
Speak With an Experienced Brockton Criminal Defense Attorney
Cases involving criminal responsibility require more than identifying that a defendant has a mental health diagnosis.
They may require extensive review of medical and psychiatric records, consultation with qualified experts, investigation of the defendant's behavior before and after the alleged offense, and careful application of Massachusetts evidence law.
At Benzaken, Maguire, Sheehan & Wood, LLP, our attorneys represent people charged with murder and other serious criminal offenses in Brockton and throughout Massachusetts. We understand the importance of developing mental health evidence early and presenting it in a way that allows a judge and jury to understand both the medical evidence and its legal significance.
If you or a family member is facing a serious criminal charge involving questions of mental illness, criminal responsibility, competency, or other complex forensic evidence, contact our office to discuss the case with an experienced Massachusetts criminal defense attorney.
Frequently Asked Questions About Commonwealth v. Sanders
What did the SJC decide in Commonwealth v. Sanders?
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court vacated Latarsha Sanders's two first-degree murder convictions and ordered a new trial. The Court concluded that the exclusion of psychiatric records supporting her lack-of-criminal-responsibility defense constituted prejudicial error.
Why were Sanders's psychiatric records important?
Criminal responsibility was the only disputed issue at trial. The records documented paranoia, hallucinations, delusional thinking, bizarre behavior, psychiatric hospitalization, and diagnoses involving psychotic and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. They provided clinical support for the defense expert's opinion that Sanders was psychotic when the killings occurred.
Are hospital and psychiatric records admissible in Massachusetts criminal trials?
They can be. G.L. c. 233, § 79 permits qualifying hospital records concerning treatment and medical history to be admitted under a statutory hearsay exception. Not everything contained in a medical record is automatically admissible, however. Questions of relevance, second-level hearsay, reliability, and potential confusion may still require redaction or exclusion of particular portions.
What is the Massachusetts standard for lack of criminal responsibility?
Under Massachusetts law, a defendant is not criminally responsible if, because of a mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of the conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of the law.
Did the SJC find Sanders not guilty by reason of insanity?
No. The SJC did not decide whether Sanders lacked criminal responsibility. It held that the jury should have been permitted to consider relevant admissible psychiatric records when deciding that question. The case was returned to the Superior Court for a new trial.
Speak With an Experienced Brockton Criminal Defense Attorney
Cases involving criminal responsibility require more than identifying that a defendant has a mental health diagnosis.
They may require extensive review of medical and psychiatric records, consultation with qualified experts, investigation of the defendant's behavior before and after the alleged offense, and careful application of Massachusetts evidence law.
At Benzaken, Sheehan & Wood, LLP, our attorneys represent people charged with murder and other serious criminal offenses in Brockton and throughout Massachusetts. We understand the importance of developing mental health evidence early and presenting it in a way that allows a judge and jury to understand both the medical evidence and its legal significance.
If you or a family member is facing a serious criminal charge involving questions of mental illness, criminal responsibility, competency, or other complex forensic evidence, contact our office to discuss the case with an experienced Massachusetts criminal defense attorney.