Missouri woman who spent 43 years in prison is free after her murder conviction was overturned

CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (AP) — A woman whose murder conviction was overturned after she served 43 years of a life sentence was released Friday, despite efforts over the past month by Missouri’s attorney general to keep her behind bars.

Sandra Hemme, 64, walked out of a Chillicothe jail hours after a judge threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt if they continued to fight her release. She reunited with her family in a nearby park, where she hugged her sister, daughter and granddaughter.

“You were just a baby when your mom sent me a picture of you,” she said. “You looked just like your mommy when you were little and you still look just like her.”

Her granddaughter laughed. “I hear that a lot.”

Hemme was the longest-held woman wrongfully imprisoned in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project. The judge originally ruled June 14 that Hemme’s attorneys had presented “clear and convincing evidence” of “actual innocence” and overturned her conviction. But Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey challenged her release in court.

“It was too easy to convict an innocent person and much harder than it should have been to free her, even to the point of ignoring court orders,” her attorney Sean O’Brien said. “It shouldn’t be this hard to free an innocent person.”

During a court hearing Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman said that if Hemme was not released within hours, Bailey himself would have to appear in court Tuesday morning and threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt of court.

He also scolded Bailey’s office for calling the warden and telling prison officials not to release Hemme after he had ordered her to be released on her own responsibility. “I would advise you never to do that,” Horsman said, adding, “Calling someone and telling them to ignore a court order is wrong.”

Hemme declined to speak to reporters after she was released. O’Brien said she went straight to her father’s side, who was in the hospital with kidney failure and recently went into palliative care. “This has been a long time coming,” he said of her release.

O’Brien had previously said the delays had caused their family “irreparable harm and emotional distress”.

There is still much struggle ahead of us.

“She will need help,” he said, noting that she is not entitled to social security because she has been in prison for so long.

Over the past month, a judge, an appellate court and the Missouri Supreme Court agreed that Hemme should be released, but she remains in custody, leaving her lawyers and legal experts baffled.

“I’ve never seen it,” said Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court justice and professor emeritus and dean of Saint Louis University Law School. “Once the courts have spoken, they have to be obeyed.”

The only setback to her freedom came from the attorney general, who filed a petition to force her to serve additional years for decades-old prison abuse cases. The warden of the Chillicothe Correctional Center initially refused to release Hemme, citing Bailey’s actions.

Horsman ruled on June 14 that “the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence.” A state appeals court ruled on July 8 that Hemme should be released while it continued to investigate the case. The next day, July 9, Horsman ruled that Hemme should be released to go home with her sister. The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday declined to overturn lower court rulings that allowed her to be released on her own recognizance and placed with her sister and brother-in-law.

Bailey, a Republican who faces opposition in the Aug. 6 primary, responded Thursday night with a new request asking the court to reconsider its position.

Hemme was serving a life sentence at Chillicothe Correctional Center for the 1980 stabbing death of library worker Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Hemme’s immediate freedom was complicated by sentences she received for crimes she committed while behind bars. She was given a 10-year sentence in 1996 for attacking a prison officer with a razor, and a two-year sentence in 1984 for “offering violence.” Bailey had argued that Hemme posed a safety risk to herself and others and that she should now begin serving those sentences.

Her lawyers argued that keeping her in custody any longer would be a “draconian outcome.”

Some lawyers agreed.

Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, said the effort to keep Hemme in prison was “a shock to the conscience of any decent person” since evidence strongly suggests she did not commit the crime.

Bailey’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Bailey, who was appointed attorney general after Eric Schmitt was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, has a history of opposing overturning convictions, even when local prosecutors present evidence of actual innocence.

Horsman concluded in June, after an extensive investigation, that Hemme was heavily sedated and in a “malleable mental state” when detectives repeatedly questioned her at a psychiatric hospital after the murder. Her attorneys described her eventual confession as “often monosyllabic answers to leading questions.” Other than the confession, there was no evidence linking her to the crime, her prosecutor said.

Meanwhile, St. Joseph police ignored evidence that pointed to Michael Holman, a colleague who died in 2015. Moreover, the prosecution was not told of FBI findings that could have exonerated Hemme, and therefore were never released before her trial, the judge ruled.

Evidence presented to Horsman showed that Holman’s pickup truck was seen outside Jeschke’s apartment, that he attempted to use her credit card, and that her earrings were found in his home.

In his report, Horsman called Hemme ‘the victim of a clear injustice’.

Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.