“We all know what would of happened if she were Black.”
This statement, often said with a slight tilt of the head, and an all knowing, all too confident smirk, and raised eyebrows will undoubtedly be raised at some point when members of my Black family are discussing topics in current events—a man with a large gun swung across his back and another on his hip, arguing with police officers, a child shoplifting from the local convenience store whose only punishment is to apologize to the store owner, a child hitting his teacher and just sent home for the day with no other consequences. I know other Black families have these conversations, and I see it in the comments on social media posts. Sometimes an emoji written under a post or a shared look between two Black people is enough to communicate, “We all know what would of happened if she were Black” without any words at all, because we know.
“We all know what would of happened if she were Black,” is born from our own experiences as Black Americans, the experiences of other Black people that we’ve witnessed, and our acute understanding that people of color, particularly the every day, non-celebrity Black person are not typically forgiven for wrongdoing. We are not shielded from the legal consequences of misdeeds in the ways that white people tend to be. Black people often don’t get to escape consequences for misdeeds, intentional or unintentional.
Sometimes non-Black people will challenge this sentiment with, “Well, how do you know?” This question challenges our epistemic authority over our lived experience—it is asking us to prove what we know and what we see with our very eyes, and what anyone paying attention ought to be able to see as well. But sometimes an example comes along that doesn’t force us to prove what we know, what we’ve always known. Instead, “We all know what would of happened if she were Black” is displayed for everyone to see.
Latarsha Sanders, a Black woman sentenced to prison for killing her two children, is currently on display for us to watch, partially because of Lindsay Clancy, a white woman on trial for also killing her three children. Their mental health status is showing up in very different ways in their cases, forcing us to consider how race, views of criminality among Black people, and mental health intersect in our legal system.
I am not a legal scholar, so I offer no opinion on the purported crimes of Latarsha Sanders and Lindsay Clancy. I do, however, notice instances of violations of a basic Aristotelian idea of justice—to treat like cases alike—or the idea that when in a similar situation, people should be treated similarly.
Both Sanders and Clancy had the same judge, Judge William F. Sullivan, presiding over their cases in the same Massachusetts courtroom. Both women were charged with murder by the same district attorney. Both women were charged with murdering their children. And both Clancy and Sanders’ defense argued that the women were not criminally responsible for killing their children due to their mental health state.
In Clancy’s case, her mental health records were allowed to be a part of her defense, who argued that she suffered from postpartum psychosis, which contributed to her criminal actions. Sanders, however, was not seeking mental health care before she killed her children. Though during her trial, family members attested to her erratic behavior and fears that a secret society was trying to harm her and her children. After her arrest, Sanders was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which was affirmed during the course of her trial by an expert clinical neuropsychologist based on her psychotic behavior, evidence of psychosis in her notebooks, and the nature of the killings.
During Sanders’ trial, however, Judge Sullivan did not allow her defense to present her mental health records to jurors, citing them as irrelevant and inadmissible unless the prosecution brought them up, which they did not. This means that Sanders’ diagnosis was never brought up during her trial.
In 2022 Sanders was convicted of murder and received two life sentences. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has overturned Sanders’ conviction, and she will receive a new trial, declaring that by excluding her mental health records, Sanders defense was “impermissibly stripped of the medical foundation that supported it [her defense].” In her new trial, her mental health records can be presented as a part of her defense. In Clancy’s trial, as of Sept 5, the judge declared a mistrial because the jury did not unanimously agree to a not guilty by reason of insanity decision. A hearing is set for Sept 29, at which Clancy and everyone closely following this case may learn her fate.
In Clancy’s case, her poor mental health was allowed to be used as an explanation for criminal behavior and to absolve her from responsibility for her actions. Sanders’ poor mental health, on the other hand, was ignored, and she was thought to be fully responsible for her criminal behavior.
One difference between Sanders and Clancy that people may point out is that Clancy sought care for her declining mental status before killing her children, while Sanders did not. While we do not know the exact circumstances of Sanders or Clancy’s care, we do know that the women are from towns with very different average income levels, $80k vs $177k, respectively. So while we do not know details, we ought to consider access to mental health care as a factor in Sanders’ case. How accessible was a mental health care provider to Sanders? Was cost, child care, transportation, medical insurance, stigma, and any other barriers we know that can impede access to health care for individuals from low income or marginalized backgrounds factors for Sanders? In other words, not having a diagnosis is not enough to sway me that there are enough similarities between Sanders and Clancy to support Sanders’ mental health to be a part of her defense in the same way Clancy was allowed to turn to her mental health as support for her defense.
Again, I make no comment about who has a mental illness and who does not, or who is responsible for a crime and who is not. My issue is that these are two similar cases being treated very differently by those with the power to punish these women. And the person being held to different standards of responsibility and criminality is a Black woman.
There is a history of Black people suffering from mental illness being treated with much more force and state-sponsored violence. And much of the origins of mental health care stem from the control and enslavement of African and African Americans. This is all a part of Sanders’ story. How her trial ended very differently from what is happening with Clancy includes the Black people’s relationship to our legal system and to mental health care.
“We all know what would of happened if she were Black” is not paranoia. It’s an expected response to seeing race, mental health, and criminality intertwined in such a way that Black people keep finding themselves on the losing end of the tenet- treat like cases alike.
Keisha Ray, PhD is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.