A judge has overturned the conviction of a Missouri woman who was in psychiatric care when she incriminated herself in a 1980 murder that her lawyers said was actually committed by a police officer.
Judge Ryan Horsman ruled Friday night that Sandra Hemme, who spent 43 years behind bars, had established evidence of her innocence and must be released within 30 days unless prosecutors try her again. He said his trial lawyer was ineffective and prosecutors failed to disclose some evidence that could have helped his case.
Her lawyers say this is the longest known period a woman has been incarcerated for a wrongful conviction. They filed a motion demanding his immediate release.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sandra Hemme spent 43 years behind bars for murder.
“We are grateful to the Court for recognizing the grave injustice that Mr.me Hemme has endured for more than four decades,” her lawyers said in a statement, promising to continue their efforts to dismiss future charges and reunite Mme Woman with her family.
A spokesperson for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey did not immediately respond to an interview request Saturday.
Sandra Hemme was shackled with leather cuffs and so heavily sedated that she “couldn’t hold her head up” or “articulate anything beyond monosyllabic responses” when she was first interrogated in the death of Patricia Jeschke, a 31-year-old library worker, according to her lawyers at the New York-based Innocence Project.
They alleged in a petition seeking her exoneration that authorities ignored the woman’s “wildly contradictory” statements and suppressed evidence implicating Michael Holman, a police officer at the time who attempted to use the woman’s credit card. murdered.
The judge wrote that “no evidence whatsoever, other than the unreliable statements of Mr.me Man, don’t connect her to the crime.” “On the other hand,” he added, “this Court finds that the evidence directly links Holman to this crime and murder scene. »
A brutal 1980 murder
It all started on November 13, 1980, when Patricia Jeschke missed work. Her worried mother climbed through a window of her apartment and discovered her daughter’s naked body on the floor, surrounded by blood. Her hands were tied behind her back with a telephone cord and a pair of tights was wrapped around her neck. A knife was under his head.
This brutal murder made headlines and detectives worked 12-hour days to solve it. But Sandra Hemme wasn’t on their radar until she showed up nearly two weeks later at the home of a nurse who had treated her, carrying a knife and refusing to leave.
Police found her in a closet and took her back to St. Joseph’s Hospital, the latest in a series of hospitalizations she has endured since she began hearing voices at age 12 years old.
She had left this hospital the day before the discovery of Patricia Jeschke’s body, and had shown up at her parents’ house later that night after having hitchhiked more than 160 kilometers.
The timing seemed suspicious to law enforcement. At the start of the interrogations, Sandra Hemme was treated with antipsychotic drugs which triggered involuntary muscle spasms. She complained that her eyes were rolling back in her head, the petition states.
Detectives noted that she seemed “mentally confused” and unable to fully understand their questions.
A police officer under the radar
The police were also becoming interested in another suspect, one of their own. About a month after the murder, Michael Holman was arrested for falsely reporting his van was stolen and collecting an insurance payout. It was the same truck spotted near the crime scene, and the officer’s alibi that he had spent the night with a woman at a nearby motel could not be confirmed.
Additionally, he attempted to use the victim’s credit card at a camera store in Kansas City, Missouri, the same day her body was found. Holman, who was eventually fired and died in 2015, said he found the card in a purse thrown into a ditch.
During a search of Holman’s home, police found a pair of gold horseshoe-shaped earrings in a closet, as well as jewelry stolen from another woman during a burglary earlier this that year.
Patricia Jeschke’s father recognized the earrings as a pair he had bought for his daughter. But then the four-day investigation into Holman ended abruptly, with many of the details uncovered never being disclosed to M’s lawyers.me Hemme.
Meanwhile, she was becoming desperate. She wrote to her parents on Christmas Day 1980 saying, “Even though I’m innocent, they want to put someone in jail so they can say the case is solved.” » She said she might as well change her admission of guilt.
“Let it end,” she said. I am tired. »
And that’s what she did the following spring, when she agreed to plead guilty to murder.
Larry Harman, who helped Hemme get her first guilty plea thrown out and later became a judge, said in the petition that he believed her to be innocent.
“The system,” he said, “failed her at every opportunity.” »