Woman's Conviction Tossed After 43 Years, Lawyers Say Cop Was Culprit

A judge has overturned the conviction of a Missouri woman who was a psychiatric patient when she incriminated herself in a 1980 killing that her attorneys argue was actually committed by a now-discredited police officer.

Judge Ryan Horsman ruled late Friday that Sandra Hemme, who has spent 43 years behind bars, had established evidence of actual innocence and must be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors retry her. He said her trial counsel was ineffective and prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her.

Her attorneys say this is the longest time a women has been been incarcerated for a wrongful conviction. They filed a motion seeking her immediate release.

A spokesperson for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey didn’t immediately respond to a text or email message seeking comment.

Hemme was shackled in leather wrist restraints and so heavily sedated that she “could not hold her head up straight” or “articulate anything beyond monosyllabic responses” when she was first questioned about the death of 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke, according to her lawyers with the New York-based Innocence Project.

They alleged in a petition seeking her exoneration that authorities ignored Hemme’s “wildly contradictory” statements and suppressed evidence implicating Michael Holman, a then-police officer who tried to use the slain woman’s credit card.

The judge wrote that “no evidence whatsoever outside of Ms. Hemme’s unreliable statements connects her to the crime.”

“In contrast,” he added, “this Court finds that the evidence directly ties Holman to this crime and murder scene.”

It started on Nov. 13, 1980, when Jeschke missed work. Her worried mother climbed through a window at her apartment and