CRIME
Who actually committed the murder that Sandra Hemme spent 43 years in prison for?
The Missouri Supreme Court in the US has overturned the murder conviction of Hemme, who had been imprisoned for the murder of a librarian in 1980.
Friday, July 19, 2024. That was the day that Sandra Hemme was finally released from prison after spending 43 years incarcerated for a murder she did not commit. Hemme, who was 21 at the time, was imprisoned in 1980 for allegedly stabbing librarian Patricia Jeschke to death. Now, more than four decades later, she has been freed and reunited with her loved ones.
A month ago, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Hemme’s release within 30 days, annulling the murder conviction, and this has now been fulfilled. Hemme’s legal team posted the following message on social media.
“We are grateful that Ms. Hemme is now, finally, reunited with her family after 43 years. She has spent more than four decades wrongfully incarcerated for a crime she had nothing to do with. Tonight, she is surrounded by her loved ones, where she should have been all along. We will continue to fight until her name is cleared.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has spent the last month, since the state Supreme Court ordered Hemme’s release, attempting to prevent it from happening. But the 64-year-old woman, who has spent more than two-thirds of her life behind bars, was released on Friday from the Chillicothe Correctional Center, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
Additionally, this release occurred, according to KSHB 41, ten minutes before a judicial order for Hemme’s release was issued against Attorney General Bailey. He argued that Hemme had two convictions for offenses committed while in prison, which totaled a 12-year sentence, delaying her release.
Why was Sandra Hemme imprisoned? Where did the evidence point to?
According to court records, the victim of the original case was brutally murdered and also suffered a sexual assault. Hemme, a psychiatric patient, was one of the main suspects from the beginning. She left the facility where she was staying a day before the murder and confessed to the crime during an interrogation while under heavy medication. Despite her statements not matching the evidence, she was sentenced to life imprisonment without any physical proof linking her to the murder, without evidence that she knew the victim, and without witnesses or a motive.
There was, however, evidence linking a police officer, Michael Holman, to the murder. Holman used the victim’s credit card the day after the crime, his vehicle was seen near the victim’s house at the time of the murder, and he was found trying to hide the victim’s earrings in his home.
The court overturned Hemme’s conviction because the only evidence against her was her own inconsistent statements, taken while she was in crisis and in physical pain. Judge Ryan Horsman finally revoked the conviction. The judge wrote that “no evidence whatsoever outside of Ms Hemme’s unreliable statements connects her to the crime. In contrast, this Court finds that the evidence directly ties Holman to this crime and murder scene.”
Holman died in 2015.
Hemme’s case is proof of how necessary a system reform is. It’s broken. It has been broken for decades and decades.
Who helped get Sandra Hemme released?
Hemme’s case has become the longest case of wrongful imprisonment in the United States. The two men who previously held that ‘top’ position were Darryl Burton and Lamonte McIntyre. Burton was wrongfully imprisoned for 24 years and was released in 2008, and McIntyre was released in 2017 after 23 years of imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. “She has been in for 43 years. It’s almost the same amount of time Lamonte and I spent together,” Burton himself stated. “Between the two of us, we were in for 47 years.”
Burton and McIntyre founded the NGO Miracle of Innocence Project to help people going through what they experienced. In fact, Hemme’s lawyers work for this NGO. Burton also added that Sandra Hemme’s case “is proof of how necessary a system reform is. It’s broken. It has been broken for decades and decades. It shouldn’t take this long for an innocent person to get out because it’s that easy to incarcerate an innocent person.”
The NGO has organised a one-mile march from their headquarters in Kansas for July 27. Hemme, after 43 years, is now free. As they said: “Tonight she is surrounded by her loved ones, where she should have been all along. We will continue fighting until her name is cleared.”