Missouri woman who served 43 years in prison is freed after 1980 murder conviction was overturned

CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (AP) — A woman whose murder conviction was overturned after serving her sentence 43 years in prison was released Friday after Missouri’s attorney general fought for more than a month to keep her behind bars.

Sandra Hemme, 63, left the jail in Chillicothe on Friday, hours after a judge threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt of court if it continued to fight her release. She reunited with her family at a nearby park, where she hugged her daughter and granddaughter. Her sister, Joyce Ann Kays, was all smiles.

The judge initially ruled on June 14 that Hemme’s attorneys had established “clear and convincing evidence” of “actual innocence” and overturned the conviction. But Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey challenged his release in court.

At a court hearing Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman said that if Hemme was not released by a set time, he wanted Bailey himself to appear in court Tuesday morning, and he threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt.

He also criticized Bailey’s office for calling the prison warden and asking him not to release Hemme after an appeals court ruled she could be released. “I suggest you never do that,” Horsman said, adding: “Calling someone and telling them to disregard a court order is wrong.”

The Missouri Department of Corrections later confirmed that Hemme, who has been in prison for 43 years, would be released by 6 p.m. CDT Friday.

Two members of Hemme’s family were in court Friday but declined to speak after the hearing. The rest of the family was with Hemme’s father, who was hospitalized with kidney failure and transferred to hospice care. “He only wants to see his daughter free in her lifetime, just as Ms. Hemme wants nothing more than to be at her father’s bedside right now,” Hemme’s attorney, Sean O’Brien, said in a court filing Thursday.

He added that any further delay would cause his family “irreparable harm and emotional distress.”

After her release, “she’s going to go straight to her father,” O’Brien said after Friday’s hearing. “It’s taken a long time.”

Over the past month, a circuit judge, an appeals court and the Missouri Supreme Court have all agreed that Hemme should be released, but she remains behind bars, leaving her attorneys and legal experts baffled.

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

The only obstacle to Hemme’s release came from the attorney general, who filed lawsuits to force her to serve additional years for decades-old prison assault cases. The warden of Chillicothe Correctional Facility refused to release Hemme, because of Bailey’s actions.

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

Bailey, a Republican facing opposition in the Aug. 6 primary election, responded with another request Thursday night, asking the circuit court to reconsider its decision.

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

According to her legal team at the Innocence Project, she is the longest-serving wrongly incarcerated woman in the United States.

Hemme’s immediate release was complicated by the sentences she received for crimes committed in prison. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1996 for assaulting a prison employee with a razor blade, and to two years in prison in 1984 for “proposing to commit violence.” Bailey had argued that Hemme posed a risk to her safety and the safety of others and that she should begin serving those sentences immediately.

Her lawyers countered that keeping her incarcerated longer would be a “draconian consequence.”

Some legal experts agree.

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

Bailey’s office did not immediately respond to messages seeking 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 cite evidence of actual innocence.

Rider, after a thorough examinationIn June, prosecutors concluded that Hemme was sedated and in a “malleable mental state” when investigators repeatedly interviewed her at a psychiatric hospital after the killing. Her lawyers described her confessions as “often monosyllabic responses to leading questions.” Other than the confession, no evidence linked her to the crime, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, the St. Joseph Police Department ignored evidence pointing to Michael Holman — a fellow officer who died in 2015 — and the prosecution was not informed of FBI findings that could have exonerated Hemme, so they were never disclosed until after his trials, the judge found.

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

In his report, Horsman called Hemme “a victim of manifest injustice.”

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Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.