A woman who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for more than 43 years walked out of a Missouri prison Friday night.
Sandra “Sandy” Hemme, 64, was released after a judge found her not guilty in a 1980 murder case.
According to information from the National Registry of Exonerations, her prison sentence is the longest wrongful conviction of a woman in U.S. history.
Hemme was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center, about 90 minutes northeast of Kansas City.
Hemme’s release had been expected since June 14, when Livingston County Judge Ryan Horsman issued a 118-page order declaring her innocent in the Nov. 12, 1980, murder of Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph.
Buchanan County prosecutors had to decide whether to retry Hemme or drop the charges. But District Attorney Michelle Davidson has not yet announced a decision and did not respond to requests for comment on the case.
On July 9, Horsman issued an order for Hemme’s release. The Missouri Attorney General’s office called the warden and prevented her release, although there was no delay.
The Missouri attorney general’s office challenged Hemme’s innocence and then her release, filing motions in Livingston County and in the Western District Court of Appeals and the Missouri Supreme Court. On Thursday, the high court denied the attorney general’s motion to stay her release.
During a heated hearing on Friday, Horsman threatened to hold officials from the attorney general’s office in contempt of court if they continued to block her release.
“I would suggest, counsel, that you never do that again,” Horsman told Assistant Attorney General Andrew Clarke about their calls to the director, adding that it was “wrong, absolutely wrong.”
Horsman said if Hemme was not released by 6 p.m. Friday, he expected all employees of the attorney general’s office involved in the case, as well as Attorney General Andrew Bailey, to appear in his courtroom at 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Murderer suspected of being a police officer
Officers questioned Hemme several times while she was a psychiatric patient. She was convicted based on statements she gave to police, although many of them were contradictory. There was no forensic evidence linking Hemme to the murder and she had no motive.
“Evidence directly” links a former St. Joseph Police Department officer to the crime, Horsman wrote in the June ruling. Michael Holman was questioned once as a suspect but never arrested in Jeschke’s death. He died in 2015.
Holman’s truck was seen in the area on the day of the murder, his alibi could not be confirmed, and he used Jeschke’s credit card after saying he found it in a bag in a ditch. A pair of gold horseshoe earrings, identified by Jeschke’s father, were also found in Holman’s possession.
Horsman said no report on the earrings was ever provided to Hemme’s attorney. Three FBI reports on forensic evidence were also not released. Information about Holman’s criminal behavior in the months before and after the murder also was suppressed.
“The failure to disclose that evidence resulted in a process that was fundamentally unfair and resulted in a ruling that is not confidential,” Horsman’s order said.
Hemme joins a growing list of people in the Kansas City area who have been wrongfully convicted and released, including Ricky Kidd, Keith Carnes, Lamonte McIntyre and Olin “Pete” Coones. Kevin Strickland, who was released in 2021, also spent 43 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.
