A circuit judge, an appellate court and the Missouri Supreme Court agree that a woman whose murder conviction was overturned should be free after 43 years in prison.
Yet Sandra Hemme is still behind bars, leaving her lawyers and legal experts puzzled.
“I’ve never seen it,” said Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court judge and professor and dean emeritus of Saint Louis University Law School. “Once the courts have spoken, the courts should be obeyed.”
The lone holdup to freedom for the 64-year-old woman is opposition from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who has filed court actions seeking to force her to serve additional years for decades-old prison assault cases. The warden at the Chillicothe Correctional Center has declined to let Hemme go, based on Bailey’s actions.
Circuit Judge Ryan Horsman ruled on June 14 that “the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence.” A state appeals court ruled on July 8 ruled that Hemme should be set free. The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday declined to undo the lower court rulings that 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 appeal filed late Thursday asking the Circuit Court to reconsider. It’s unclear if it will. Meanwhile, a judge in Chillicothe has scheduled an afternoon hearing in the case.
Hemme has been serving a life sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Center for the 1980 stabbing death of library worker Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, Missouri.
She’s been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project. Her lawyers, in an emailed statement to The Associated Press, said her family “is eager and ready to reunite with her, and the Department of Corrections should respect and promptly” release her.
Hemme’s immediate freedom has been complicated by sentences she received for crimes committed while behind bars. She received a 10-year sentence in 1996 for attacking a prison worker with a razor blade, and a two-year sentence in 1984 for “offering to commit violence.” Bailey argues that Hemme represents a safety risk to herself and others and the additional sentences should now be served.
Her attorneys counter that keeping her incarcerated any longer would be a “draconian outcome.”
Some legal experts agree.
Peter Joy, a law professor at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, said the effort to keep Hemme in prison is “a shock to the conscience of any decent human being,” noting that she’s already served 43 years for a crime that evidence strongly suggests she didn’t commit.
“To now say she has to serve an additional 12 years is like running over a person and backing your car up to run over them a second time,” Joy said.
Bailey’s office did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
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.
In 2023, Bailey’s office argued against then-St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s effort to overturn the murder conviction of Lamar Johnson, who was imprisoned 28 years. A St. Louis judge sided with Johnson, who was freed.
Bailey’s office also argued in court in May against freeing Christopher Dunn, who has spent 33 years in prison for a 1990 killing that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore determined that Dunn probably didn’t commit. A judge is still deciding that case.
And Bailey is opposing St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s effort to set aside the murder conviction of Marcellus Williams. A hearing is Aug. 21 - just a month before Williams is scheduled to be executed. Testing unavailable at the time of the 1998 stabbing death found another person’s DNA on the knife, but not Williams’.
Horsman, after an extensive review, concluded in June that Hemme was heavily sedated and in a “malleable mental state” when investigators repeatedly questioned her in a psychiatric hospital after the killing. Her attorneys described her ultimate confession as “often monosyllabic responses to leading questions.” Other than the confession, no evidence linked her to the crime, her trial prosecutor said.
The St. Joseph Police Department, meanwhile, ignored evidence pointing to Michael Holman - a fellow officer, who died in 2015 - and the prosecution wasn’t told about FBI results that could have cleared Hemme, so it was never disclosed before her trials, the judge found.
Evidence presented to Horsman showed that Holman’s pickup truck was seen outside Jeschke’s apartment, that he tried to use her credit card, and that her earrings were found in his home.
Horsman, in his report, called Hemme “the victim of a manifest injustice.”
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