After 43 years, overturned murder conviction for a Missouri woman, as her lawyers claim a police officer might've committed the crime.
(A news outlet) — A judge has reversed the guilty verdict of a Missouri woman, who was a psychiatric patient at the time, for a 1980 murder that her lawyers claim was actually committed by a formerly discredited police officer.
Judge Ryan Horsman made his decision late on a Friday, stating that Sandra Hemme, who has spent 43 years behind bars, had provided sufficient proof of her innocence and will be released within 30 days unless charged again. He noted that her trial lawyers were ineffective and the prosecution had failed to disclose crucial evidence.
Her attorneys maintain that this is the longest time a woman has been incarcerated for a wrongful conviction. They submitted a request for her immediate release.
"We are grateful to the Court for recognizing the immense injustice Ms. Hemme has suffered for over four decades," her lawyers said in a statement, pledging to continue their efforts to clear her name and reunite her with her family.
A representative for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey did not promptly respond to a message seeking comment over the weekend.
Hemme was handcuffed in leather wrist restraints and heavily medicated, barely able to hold her head steady or express more than simple words, when she was first questioned regarding the death of 31-year-old library employee Patricia Jeschke, according to Hemme's lawyers from the New York-based Innocence Project.
They allege, in a petition for Hemme's exoneration, that authorities disregarded Hemme’s "dramatically inconsistent" statements and concealed evidence implicating Michael Holman, a police officer at the time who attempted to use Jeschke’s credit card.
The judge concluded that "no evidence whatsoever, beyond Hemme's unreliable statements, links her to the crime."
"Conversely," he added, "this Court finds that the evidence directly links Holman to this crime and murder scene."
The events began on November 13, 1980, when Jeschke failed to show up for work. Her worried mother broke into her apartment and discovered her naked body on the floor, surrounded by blood. Her hands were tied behind her back with a phone cord and a pair of pantyhose was tied around her throat. A knife lay beneath her head.
The gruesome killing made headlines, with detectives working around the clock to solve it. Hemme did not initially come under suspicion until she appeared at a nurse's home nearly two weeks later, armed with a knife and incapable of leaving.
Police found her in a closet, and returned her to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where she had been a patient numerous times, including the day prior to Jeschke’s body being discovered and the night afterward after hitchhiking over 100 miles (160 kilometers) across the state.
The timing appeared suspicious to law enforcement. As the interrogations began, Hemme was given antipsychotic drugs that caused involuntary muscle spasms. She complained that her eyes felt like they were rolling back in her head, the petition stated.
Detectives noticed that Hemme appeared "intensely confused" and struggled to comprehend their questions.
"Each time the police extracted a statement from Hemme, it changed drastically from the last, often incorporating explanations of facts the police had just recently discovered," her lawyers wrote.
Eventually, she claimed to have witnessed a man named Joseph Wabski kill Jeschke.
Wabski, who she met during their stays in the state hospital's detoxification unit, was charged with capital murder. But prosecutors quickly dropped the case upon learning he was at an alcohol treatment center in Topeka, Kansas, at the time.
Meanwhile, police were also taking a closer look at another suspect – one of their own. About a month after the murder, Holman was arrested for submitting a false report claiming his pickup truck had been stolen and receiving an insurance payout. The same truck was spotted near the crime scene, and Holman's alibi that he spent the night with a woman at a nearby motel could not be verified.
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 eventually lost his job and passed away in 2015, stated that he found the card in a discarded purse in a ditch.
During the 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 claimed to recognize the earrings as a pair he had bought for his daughter. However, the four-day investigation into Holman came to a sudden end, and many of the details that surfaced were not shared with Hemme's attorneys.
Hemme, on the other hand, became increasingly desperate. She wrote to her parents on Christmas Day 1980, saying, "Even though I'm innocent, they want to pin someone for this crime, so they can say the case is solved." She expressed a desire to change her plea to guilty.
"Just let it end," she said. "I'm tired."
And that is exactly what she did the following spring, when she agreed to admit guilt to capital murder in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.
Even that agreement was a challenge; the judge initially refused her guilty plea due to her inability to provide sufficient details about the incident, saying: "I really didn't know I had done it until a few days later, once it was in the papers and on the news."
Her attorney advised her that her only chance to avoid the death penalty was to get the judge to accept her guilty plea. After a brief recess and some coaching, she provided more information.
Despite the overturned plea on appeal, she was once again found guilty in 1985 during a rapid trial. The jurors were not informed about the allegedly oppressive and coercive interrogations she underwent.
Larry Harman, who aided Hemme in having her first guilty plea nullified and later became a judge, expressed his belief in her innocence in a petition.
"The system," he stated, "let her down at every possible turn."
Read also:
The judge's decision to overturn Sandra Hemme's conviction has led to a call for the investigation of the Formerly discredited police officer, who is believed to be the actual perpetrator in this case.
Given the new evidence and the judge's conclusion, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey's office should reconsider their stance on the case and launch a formal investigation into the former police officer's involvement.
