Sandra Hemme's murder conviction overturned after 43 years in Missouri prison

Hemme's statements, according to his lawyers, conflict with information police found in the killing of Patricia Jeschke, whose hands were tied behind her back with a telephone cord when her body was found in her St. Joseph, Missouri. Hemme eventually told police she killed Jeschke.

But the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that aims to exonerate people it says were wrongly convicted, said it filed a petition in Livingston County Circuit Court last year, arguing that police exploited Hemme's mental health and pressured her into making false statements, which caused her to make false statements. of having been wrongly imprisoned in 1981 on the basis of a life sentence which she is still serving.

On Friday evening, a judge overturned Hemme's conviction, saying she had presented evidence of her innocence and should be released within 30 days unless prosecutors retry her, according to the Associated Press. It is unclear whether Hemme will be retried or quickly released from prison; The Missouri attorney general's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the Innocence Project, Hemme's 43 years behind bars constitute the longest wrongful conviction of a woman in U.S. history. Jail records showed Hemme, 64, was being held at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri on Saturday evening.

The Innocence Project did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but said in a statement to the AP: “We are grateful to the Court for recognizing the grave injustice that Ms. Hemme endured.”

Hemme was released from St. Joseph State Hospital a day before Jeschke was found dead in November 1980, the AP reported. Police said Jeschke was strangled, the St. Joseph News-Press reported at the time.

Police began investigating Hemme, who lived in Concordia, Mo., about two weeks later when she took a knife to the home of one of her former nurses, according to the AP. Police took Hemme back to the hospital, where she received treatment for auditory hallucinations, derealization and drug abuse, the Innocence Project said. Hemme had been receiving psychiatric treatment since age 12, according to the Innocence Project.

While receiving treatment, Hemme spoke to officers as a suspect and said she had killed Jeschke, the AP reported. His trial lasted one day in the spring of 1981, the Innocence Project said. Hemme pleaded guilty to capital murder, but his testimony was so vague that the judge initially denied his plea, the St. Joseph News-Press reported at the time.

There was no evidence linking Hemme to the crime scene, the Innocence Project said. Nevertheless, the judge ultimately accepted his guilty plea.

But in March 2023, the Innocence Project said it had gathered evidence showing that Hemme was innocent and that the crime was actually committed by Michael Holman, who was a St. Joseph police officer at the time of Jeschke's death. The Innocence Project said police hid evidence linking Holman, who died in 2015, to the crime. The St. Joseph Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

On Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman ruled that “no evidence whatsoever, other than Ms. Hemme's unreliable statements, connects her to the crime” and that “the evidence directly links Holman to this crime scene and of murder,” the AP reported.

Hemme's conviction is the latest to be overturned in recent years, as DNA testing and forensic resources have become more readily available and old testimony is re-examined. Glynn Simmons, who spent 48 years in Oklahoma as part of the longest wrongful conviction case in U.S. history, was released in July. Vincent Simmons, who was imprisoned in Louisiana for more than 44 years for attempted aggravated rape, was released in 2022. The two men, who do not appear to be related, were released after authorities in both cases said they did not receive fair justice. tests.

A 2020 study found that more than half of wrongful convictions stemmed from government misconduct. Hemme's lawyers argued that this applied to his case.