Sandra Hemme, a 64-year-old woman from Missouri with a history of mental illness, was recently declared innocent of a murder she spent over 40 years in prison for. The judge ruled her innocence “clear and convincing,” but she hasn’t been released yet.
Prosecutors are appealing the ruling, arguing that Hemme should stay imprisoned because they believe she is dangerous, referencing a previous prison assault. However, Hemme’s lawyers say new evidence points to a former police officer as the real culprit and that Hemme poses no threat, according to NBC News.
They contend she is the longest wrongly imprisoned woman in US history and is advocating for her immediate release.
It remains uncertain if she will be re-tried for Ms. Jeschke’s murder.
Exoneration petition alleges conviction based on statements made under mental illness
The exoneration petition claims that her conviction was based solely on her statements to the police, made while she was mentally ill and under strong medication. Buchanan County prosecutors have not commented on a possible retrial.
“This Court finds that the evidence as a whole establishes that Ms Hemme’s statements inculpating herself are inconsistent, contradicted by physical evidence and accounts of reliable, independent witnesses and that Ms Hemme’s impaired psychiatric condition when questioned substantially undermine the reliability of those statements as evidence of guilt,” Horsman said in the petition. “… This Court further finds that no evidence whatsoever outside of Ms Hemme’s unreliable statements connects her to the crime.”
Hemme spent 43 years wrongfully imprisoned
The Innocence Project, based in New York, took on Hemme’s case and noted that she spent 43 years wrongfully imprisoned.
“No witnesses linked Ms Hemme to the murder, the victim, or the crime scene. She had no motive to harm Ms. Jeschke, nor was there any evidence that the two had ever met. Neither did any physical or forensic evidence link Ms. Hemme to the killing,” the statement said.
Hemme’s conviction was based on her “false and unreliable” confessions, made while she was treated at a state psychiatric hospital and “forcibly given medication literally designed to overpower her will,” according to the statement.
The Innocence Project accused Holman and the St. Joseph police of hiding evidence that implicated a colleague.
“Fellow police officer Michael Holman, who was found using the victim’s credit card the day after the murder; whose truck was seen parked near the victim’s home at the time she was killed; in whose closet the victim’s earrings were discovered; and who in the months before and after Ms. Jeschke’s murder, committed many other crimes against women,” The Innocence Project said in a statement.
