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.
“We are grateful to the Court for recognizing the grave injustice that Ms. Hemme suffered for more than four decades,” her lawyers said in a statement, promising to continue their efforts to dismiss future charges and reunite Ms. Hemme with her family.
A spokesperson for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey did not immediately respond to an interview request Saturday.
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, aside from Ms. Hemme’s unreliable statements, connects 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. »
It all started on November 13, 1980, when Patricia Jeschke took time off 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 pantyhose was wrapped around her neck. A knife was under her 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 been released from this hospital the day before Patricia Jeschke’s body was discovered, and had shown up at her parents’ house later that night after having hitchhiked more than 100 miles.
The moment 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.
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 as stolen and collecting an insurance payout. This 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 Ms. Hemme’s lawyers.
Meanwhile, she was becoming desperate. She wrote to her parents on Christmas Day 1980 saying, “Even though I am 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. »
