Missouri Woman's Murder Verdict Overturned After 43 Years

A Missouri woman who spent more than 43 years in prison for a murder her attorneys argue was committed by a now-discredited police officer could soon be released after a judge overturned the conviction. If released, Sandra Hemme's prison term will mark the longest known wrongful conviction of a woman in U.S. history.

Missouri Circuit Judge Ryan Horsman ruled Friday that Hemme has established evidence of actual innocence and must be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors retry her. He said her trial counsel was ineffective and prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her.

“This Court finds the evidence establishing Ms. Hemme’s innocence to be clear and convincing,” concluded Judge Horsman.

"We are grateful to the Court for acknowledging the grave injustice Ms. Hemme has endured for more than four decades," her attorneys with The Innocence Project said in a statement, promising to keep up their efforts to dismiss the charges and reunite Hemme with her family. "Police exploited her mental illness and coerced her into making false statements while she was sedated and being treated with antipsychotic medication."

Hemme's attorneys say the only evidence linking Hemme to Jeschke's death were "wildly contradictory" and "factually impossible" statements she gave to detectives while she was a patient at the St. Joseph State Hospital's psychiatric ward. Hemme was shackled in leather wrist restraints and so heavily sedated that she "could not hold her head up straight" or "articulate anything beyond monosyllabic responses" when she was first questioned about the death of 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke.

They alleged in a petition seeking her exoneration that authorities ignored Hemme's "wildly contradictory" statements and suppressed evidence implicating Michael Holman, a then-police officer who tried to use the slain woman's credit card.

About a month after the killing, Holman was arrested for falsely reporting that his pickup truck had been stolen and collecting an insurance payout. It was the same truck spotted near the crime scene, and the officer's alibi that he spent the night with a woman at a nearby motel couldn't be confirmed. Furthermore, he had tried to use Jeschke's credit card at a camera store in Kansas City, Missouri, on the same day her body was found. Holman, who ultimately was fired and died in 2015, said he found the card in a purse that had been discarded in a ditch.

During a search of Holman's home, police found a pair of gold horseshoe-shaped earrings in a closet, along with jewelry stolen from another woman during a burglary earlier that year. Jeschke's father said he recognized the earrings as a pair he bought for his daughter. But then the four-day investigation into Holman ended abruptly, many of the details uncovered never given to Hemme's attorneys.

Larry Harman, who helped Hemme get her initial guilty plea thrown out and later became a judge, said in the petition that he believed she was innocent.

“The system,” Harman said, “failed her at every opportunity.”

You can read more about the case and Hemme's 43-year fight for her freedom from KCTV5's website "Missouri prisoner of four decades wins innocence claim in court."