A Massachusetts woman convicted in the stabbing deaths of her two young sons has been granted a new trial.
According to previous information released by the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office, Latarsha L. Sanders of Brockton was sentenced in December of 2022 to mandatory life in prison without parole for murder and 9-10 years for Witness Intimidation.
In February of 2018 Sanders was arraigned in Brockton District Court on two counts of Murder in the death of her sons, ages five and eight-years-old. She pleaded not guilty and was held without bail.
Brockton Police received a 911 call for a medical emergency on Prospect Street. Brockton Fire and emergency medical personnel responded and found Sanders outside the address, distraught and combative. EMS transported Sanders for medical evaluation and Brockton Police proceeded to secure Sanders’s third floor apartment. There, they found the two boys in beds in two separate rooms. The children had each been stabbed about 50 times in the face, neck, stomach, and legs and were determined to be deceased on scene. Brockton Police contacted State Police Detectives assigned to the District Attorney’s Office, and a homicide investigation began.
The victims were brothers. 8-year-old Edson Brito and 5-year-old Lason Brito.
According to the DA, investigators conducted multiple interviews with people associated with the victims. Sanders made statements to investigators that could be construed as admissions to the crime and told police the killings were part of a ritualistic incident. Sanders allegedly cleaned up the children, placed them in beds, and mopped up the crime scene. She never sought medical attention for the boys. State Police located a kitchen knife left in the sink that was believed to be the murder weapon.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court granted has granted Sanders a new trial due to the trial judge wrongly excluding her post-arrest medical records documenting diagnoses and treatment for mental illness.
Those records (from prison and a state psychiatric hospital) were admissible and central to her sole defense: that she was not criminally responsible due to severe mental illness when she killed her two young sons. The court said keeping that evidence from the jury stripped the insanity defense of its medical foundation and was prejudicial error.
The convictions were vacated and the case is being sent back for a new trial.
