Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has two cases on his desk that have nothing to do with each other and everything in common. In both, a mother killed her children. In both, the only contested question was whether she was criminally responsible. In both, the trial was in front of Judge William F. Sullivan. And in both, the first attempt at a verdict has been wiped out: one by a hung jury on September 4, the other by the Supreme Judicial Court on August 6.
Cruz has said nothing about either since the Clancy mistrial beyond that no decision would be made that day. His office told reporters after the Sanders reversal that it was reviewing the opinion and “determining our next steps going forward.” Here is what those next steps are, what the deadlines actually say, and why the second case makes the first one harder.
Sanders: the case the SJC sent back
Latarsha Sanders stabbed her two sons, eight-year-old Edson “Marlon” Brito and five-year-old La’Son Brito, to death in their Brockton apartment in early February 2018. She has never disputed it. Justice Frank Gaziano’s opinion opens with the sentence “There is no doubt the defendant committed these incomprehensible crimes,” and identifies the sole issue as criminal responsibility. A jury convicted her of two counts of first-degree murder in December 2022, on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty, and she was sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
The SJC vacated both convictions in Commonwealth v. Sanders, SJC-13552. The error was Sullivan’s exclusion of Sanders’ medical records from MCI-Framingham and the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital, where she was committed before trial. Those records documented diagnoses and treatment for psychotic illness in the years after the killings. Sullivan kept them from the jury. The SJC held they were admissible under the hospital-records statute, chapter 233, section 79, and that excluding them “impermissibly stripped the sole defense of the medical foundation that supported it.” We covered the decision when it came down in our report on the Sanders reversal.
Because the case is going back, the Court also addressed two things the prosecutor said in closing. She called Sanders “evil” repeatedly; the Court said the word may be used, if at all, only as it bears on an issue in the case and not as a label for bad character. She also told the jury that Sanders had lifted her account from an episode of Law & Order: SVU that was playing on a bedroom television when police arrived. The Court found no evidence Sanders had watched the episode or copied anything, and said so in a way that reads as an instruction for round two.
The Sanders clock
An SJC order for a new trial does not become final the day it is announced. Under the appellate rules the rescript issues to the trial court 28 days after the decision, absent a motion for reconsideration. Twenty-eight days from August 6 is September 3, 2026.
From that date, Rule 36(b)(1)(D) of the Rules of Criminal Procedure controls: “If a retrial of the defendant is ordered, the trial shall commence within one year after the date the action occasioning the retrial becomes final,” extended by the rule’s excludable periods. If the Commonwealth misses it, the defendant is entitled on motion to dismissal. That is the source of the twelve months reporters have been citing. It runs to roughly September 2027, and continuances the defense requests or agrees to do not count against it.
Cruz’s options are the ones the rule leaves open. He can retry Sanders on first-degree murder, with the psychiatric records in evidence this time. He can offer a plea to second-degree murder, which carries life with parole eligibility. Or he can accept a finding of lack of criminal responsibility, which would send Sanders back to a state hospital under chapter 123 rather than to prison, and which her appellate lawyer, Robert F. Shaw Jr., has all but invited: “Latarsha Sanders was a loving mother who suffered from profound mental illness and was consumed by a psychotic state, completely untethered from reality, when her children were killed.”
Clancy: two deadlines, not one
The Clancy calendar is shorter and more crowded.
Monday, September 14. The deadline for the defense to renew its motion for a required finding of not guilty under Rule 25. The rule allows the motion to be renewed within five days after the jury is discharged, and the judge may rule on it even though the jury returned no verdict. If granted, it is an acquittal and the case ends. It is the only route by which Clancy walks out of this without a second trial or a plea, and it is a long shot: it asks Sullivan to find that no rational jury could have rejected the criminal responsibility defense, in a case where one juror did.
Tuesday, September 29. The status hearing. Kevin Reddington told CBS Mornings this week he will file a motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds that day, arguing there was no manifest necessity for the mistrial. He has also said, on CNN, that he will never agree to “a day in jail” and is open to a resolution. Cruz may announce a retrial decision at that hearing or may not; nothing requires him to.
The retrial clock. Rule 36 applies here too. A mistrial is an “action occasioning the retrial,” and it became final when Sullivan declared it on September 4. A second Clancy trial, if there is one, must begin within a year of that date, less excludable time.
Why Sanders makes Clancy harder for the Commonwealth
The two cases are legally independent. They are not practically independent, and the reasons cut in one direction.
The evidence rule now runs against the prosecution’s best argument. The Commonwealth’s theory in Clancy was that planning and concealment showed a mind that appreciated wrongfulness. Its answer to the psychiatric evidence was that it was assembled after the fact by experts hired for trial. Sanders holds that after-the-fact hospital and treatment records are admissible and that keeping them out is reversible error. Reddington’s case rests on evaluations and records generated long after January 2023, including from Tewksbury State Hospital, where Clancy has been held. Whatever the Commonwealth managed to keep out in the first trial is coming in at the second, and any judge in Plymouth County has now been told so in an opinion that names Sullivan as the trial judge.
The closing-argument warnings apply by analogy. The SJC objected to a prosecutor calling a psychotic defendant “evil” and to an argument that invented a source for her account. In the Clancy trial, the Commonwealth twice put Clancy’s Catholic faith and the concept of mortal sin before the jury; Sullivan struck the testimony and called it an inappropriate area. That record exists. A second Clancy trial will be prosecuted with Sanders as the reference point for what a closing may not do.
The jury pool has been told how this ends. Four jurors have now given interviews, and the most recent, on Good Morning America Thursday, predicted that “nine times out of 10” a second jury would find Clancy not criminally responsible. We covered the juror interviews and what they mean for picking a second jury. A prosecutor weighing a retrial has to weigh a venire that has heard that.
The office is trying both in the same courthouse. Two criminal responsibility retrials, two mothers, the same judge, and the same defense bar watching each for signals about the other. A resolution in Sanders that accepts lack of criminal responsibility would be read as a template for Clancy. A decision to retry both on first-degree murder would be read as a policy. Cruz will be asked about the pair together for as long as either is pending, and the questions will get harder if the outcomes diverge.
What none of this changes
Neither woman is going home on any of these paths. A finding of lack of criminal responsibility in Massachusetts leads to commitment for evaluation and, on a showing of dangerousness by reason of mental illness, to continued commitment reviewed at intervals. Clancy remains held without bail at Tewksbury State Hospital. Sanders’ custody status following the reversal has not been reported; she had been serving two life sentences. We explained the commitment process in what actually happens after a not criminally responsible verdict.
The decisions in front of Cruz are about which building each woman is held in and for how long, and about whether the Commonwealth wants to try, twice more, to persuade twelve people that a mother who killed her children in a documented psychotic state knew that it was wrong.
Who is Latarsha Sanders?
A Brockton mother convicted in December 2022 of first-degree murder in the February 2018 stabbing deaths of her sons Edson and La’Son Brito, ages eight and five. The Supreme Judicial Court vacated both convictions on August 6, 2026 and ordered a new trial.
Why was the Sanders conviction overturned?
The trial judge excluded hospital and prison medical records documenting her diagnoses and treatment for psychotic illness after her arrest. The SJC held the records were admissible under G.L. c. 233, § 79 and that excluding them stripped her criminal responsibility defense of its medical foundation.
How long does the DA have to retry Sanders?
Under Rule 36(b)(1)(D), a retrial must begin within one year of the date the order for a new trial became final, which is when the SJC’s rescript issued 28 days after the decision. That is roughly September 2027, extended by any excludable time.
What are the next dates in the Clancy case?
September 14 is the deadline for a renewed Rule 25 motion for a required finding of not guilty. September 29 is the status hearing, where the defense says it will file a double jeopardy motion to dismiss.
Has Cruz decided whether to retry Lindsay Clancy?
No. He said on September 4 that no decision would be made that day and has not announced one since.
Does the Sanders decision affect the Clancy case?
Not as binding precedent on any ruling already made. But it holds that after-the-fact psychiatric records are admissible in a criminal responsibility case and warns against closing arguments that label the defendant or invent facts, both of which bear on how any Clancy retrial would be tried.
Sanders facts and holdings from the slip opinion in Commonwealth v. Sanders, SJC-13552 (August 6, 2026), read in full. Rule 36 and Rule 25 text from the Massachusetts Rules of Criminal Procedure; rescript timing from Mass. R. App. P. 23. Cruz’s office statement as reported by CBS Boston and NBC Boston. Reddington’s statements as reported by Boston.com (CBS Mornings) and WHDH (CNN), September 9, 2026. Juror statement from Good Morning America, September 10, 2026. Charges against Lindsay Clancy remain unproven and she is presumed innocent. Latarsha Sanders’ convictions have been vacated and she is presumed innocent pending retrial. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.