Mother sentenced to life for slayings
Jury rejected insanity claim in boys’ stabbings
A Brockton woman on Wednesday was ordered to spend the rest of her life in prison for murdering two of her children in 2018, an act of violence her family believes was caused by overpowering mental illness.
On Tuesday, Latarsha L. Sanders was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder by a Plymouth Superior Court jury, which rejected the defense claim that the 48-year-old woman was insane on Feb. 5, 2018, when she stabbed 8-year-old Edson “Marlon” Brito and 5-year-old La’Son Brito to death in their Brockton home. The jury deliberated for four hours, prosecutors said.
First-degree murder carries two mandatory results in Massachusetts: The sentence is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole; and an automatic review by the Supreme Judicial Court, usually after a defendant has first spent several years in prison.
When Sanders was indicted in March 2018, prosecutors said she had confessed to stabbing both children multiple times with a kitchen knife in her Prospect Street home and then cleaning them up, placing them in bed, and mopping up the murder scene, the Globe reported at the time. Sanders also blamed several other people for the deaths, prosecutors asserted.
Sanders’ mother told police that before the boys’ deaths, her daughter had become obsessed with the Illuminati and ritual sacrifices. Her mother believed Sanders was mentally ill but said Sanders refused to seek treatment.
In a brief sentencing hearing in Plymouth Superior Court Wednesday, defense attorney Elliot R. Levine said Sanders’ family does not
believe she is a criminal who presents a danger to the public.
“The family is not in favor of the life sentence, but we know you have no discretion,” Levine told Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan. “The family has been totally and completely supportive of Miss Sanders because they have recognized from day one that she was insane at the time that she killed her two children. That has been their position all along, and they were shocked by the degree of insanity that she had.”
Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Amanda Fowle also noted that Sullivan had no sentencing discretion in the murder convictions. But she asked that a sentence of 5 to 20 years on a third conviction, for misleading police, also be imposed after Sanders completes her life sentence.
Fowle said she wanted Sanders to remain in prison if the murder convictions were overturned on appeal. The judge later rejected the request.
Fowle also acknowledged that Sanders’ family did not support the mandatory life sentence.
“The Commonwealth understands that with regards to everything that has happened, this is difficult for all members of the family. They are not in favor of the sentence that the Commonwealth is asking for.”
However, the father of the two boys, Edison Brito, who testified during the nine-day trial, supported the life sentence, Fowle said.
After hearing from the attorneys, Sullivan spoke briefly, and quoted Aeschylus, a Greek tragedian who lived around 500 B.C.
“Last night after the verdict, I kept thinking about the sentencing here today. And also kept thinking about those two little boys,” he said from the bench. “And it brought to mind lines from a poem that was written many years ago that said, ‘pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart.’ "
Sullivan then addressed Sanders’ family and the children’s father.
“The pain of the father, the sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandmother, La’Son and Marlon — that’s a pain that falls on their hearts every day. And that is a life sentence,” he said.
In a statement, Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said the trial was “difficult” for every family member.
“These two young boys were innocent babies with their lives ahead of them,” Cruz said in the statement. “This was an emotional and difficult case for all of the family members involved. There were no winners in the courtroom today.”
In a telephone interview after the verdict, Levine, the defense attorney, called Cruz’s decision to pursue a first-degree murder charge “very draconian.”
He said he believed that prosecutors in Norfolk or Suffolk counties would have acknowledged the evidence of Sanders’ mental illness and agreed to a jury-waived trial on second-degree murder, creating the chance for the judge to find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
Sanders, he said, was diagnosed with an illness in the schizophrenia spectrum, and the manner in which she ended her two sons’ lives clearly established just how mentally ill she was that day.
“Family members said she was a loving, caring mother” until her illness overwhelmed her, he said. “Juries just don’t buy the insanity defense.”
However, Cruz spokeswoman Beth Stone said it was Sanders’ choice to have the case heard by a jury.
“The jury has spoken and found her guilty of two murders in the first degree,” Stone said.