If a Black woman killed her children, potential supporters would stay far away, Congresswoman charges
By Frederick H. Lowe. U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Mace said Lindsay Clancy wouldn’t have gotten the support she is receiving if she were a Black woman. “Oh, nobody would be supporting her if she were Black. These liberal White women aren’t gonna support a Black woman who murdered her kids,” said Mace, a Republican from South Carolina. Throngs of White women contributed millions of dollars in addition to voicing their support for Clancy, a Massachusetts mother, who strangled to death her three children, claiming she was suffering from postpartum psychotic depression. She is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of her three young children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, in their Massachusetts home in January 2023, before she attempted to kill herself. Massachusetts Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday during Clancy’s hearing because jurors couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. An unknown woman standing behind prosecutors frowned and shook her head in disbelief (BlackmansStreet, Sep. 4) Sullivan also presided over the case of Latarsha Sanders. Sanders, a 51-year-old Black woman, was found guilty by a jury in December 2022 of murdering her sons, Edson Brito, 8, and La’Son Brito, 5. Prosecutors successfully proved at trial that Sanders had stabbed the eight-year-old nearly 80 times and stabbed the five-year-old more than 20 times as part of what she called a ‘Voodoo ritual.’ She was sentenced to two mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole, until the Massachusetts Supreme Court overturned the lower court ruling. Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court vacated Sanders’s conviction, stating that there were problems with Sanders’s 2022 trial and that she deserved a new hearing. The court issued the ruling on August 6, 2026. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the court excluded relevant records concerning Sanders’ sanity. Exclusion of medical records – After her arrest, Sanders was diagnosed as “grossly psychotic” and given diagnoses of schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. The trial judge, Sullivan, excluded thousands of pages of her psychiatric records, ruling they could be referenced only if the prosecutor “opened the door” on cross-examination. The Supreme Court held this was prejudicial error because such records are admissible and directly relevant to the criminal responsibility defense. The Massachusetts Supreme Court also ruled that the prosecutor claimed Sanders was watched “Law and Order” SVU about voodoo rituals. But it was a baseless claim. Improper prosecutor argument – The prosecutor told the jury Sanders had copied “plotlines” from Law & Order: SVU involving “voodoo rituals,” despite no evidence she had watched the show. The SJC found this baseless claim improper. The court emphasized that Sanders’s crimes were “incomprehensible,” but the question for the jury was whether she was criminally responsible for them at the time. The decision mirrors issues in the Lindsay Clancy trial before Judge Sullivan. Both cases turn on the admissibility of psychiatric records in insanity defenses. Sanders’s retrial will proceed in Plymouth Superior Court, where prosecutors can again present the case, but now with the psychiatric evidence the SJC said must be considered. To circle back to Mace’s original point, few women, including Black women, came out to support Sanders. Mace claimed the women rallying behind Lindsay Clancy would abandon her if she were Black, accusing the “left” of being “inherently racist” as a Massachusetts jury remained deadlocked and was dismissed Friday in the closely watched case. Mace told TMZ DC journalist Jacob Wasserman about the hundreds of supporters who have gathered outside the Plymouth, Massachusetts, courthouse, many wearing pink, during Clancy’s murder trial. “Oh, nobody would be supporting her if she were Black,” Mace said.Pressed on the claim, Mace doubled down: “Liberal white women aren’t going to support a Black woman who murdered her kids.” Asked why she believed those same women would not support a Black defendant in identical circumstances, Mace replied: “I think that the left is inherently racist. That’s what I think.” |