Season 7 Episode 20 "When Sympathy Has a Face: Lindsay Clancy, Latarsha Sanders, Race, Mental Illness, and Who Gets Seen as Sick"

Two mothers. Five children tragically lost. Mental health at the center of both cases. The same Massachusetts judge. Yet the public conversations surrounding Lindsay Clancy and Latarsha Sanders have looked remarkably different.

As Clancy's case continues to receive national attention and public sympathy, Sanders's convictions were recently overturned and she was granted a new trial after concerns involving psychiatric evidence in her original case.

So I'm asking some uncomfortable but necessary questions:

Why are we more willing to see mental illness in some women than others? Why does one mother become part of a national conversation about mental health while another receives considerably less attention? And what happens when race, gender, motherhood, mental illness, and the criminal legal system intersect?

This isn't about excusing horrific acts or choosing one woman over another. Five children lost their lives, and their lives remain at the center of these tragedies.

It's about examining who receives empathy, whose mental health is taken seriously, and who gets the benefit of being seen as a whole, complicated human being.

This one may make you uncomfortable. I think that's exactly why we need to talk about it.