Sandra Hemme, who served 43 years of a life sentence for murder, was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center on Friday after her conviction was overturned. Despite efforts by Missouri’s attorney general to keep her imprisoned, Hemme, 64, reunited with her family at a nearby park.
Hemme’s conviction was overturned by Judge Ryan Horsman on June 14, citing “clear and convincing evidence” of her “actual innocence” and criticizing the trial for ineffective counsel and withheld evidence. However, Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey continued to fight her release.
During a Friday court hearing, Judge Horsman threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt if Hemme was not released promptly. He also reprimanded Bailey’s office for instructing prison officials to disregard the court’s release order.
Hemme, once the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman in the U.S., was emotional as she met her family, including her granddaughter, whom she had last seen as a baby. Hemme chose not to address reporters, with her attorney, Sean O’Brien, stating her first priority was visiting her hospitalized father.
O’Brien criticized the lengthy process to secure her release, saying, “It was too easy to convict an innocent person and way harder than it should have been to get her out, even to the point of court orders being ignored.”
Legal experts and judges, including the Missouri Supreme Court, affirmed Hemme’s release, yet delays persisted due to the attorney general’s motions. Bailey argued for additional imprisonment based on past in-prison offenses, but her attorneys countered this would be “draconian.”
Hemme was convicted for the 1980 murder of Patricia Jeschke. Her overturned conviction followed revelations that she was heavily sedated during police questioning, leading to a coerced confession. No other evidence linked her to the crime, while significant evidence pointed to another suspect, Michael Holman, a police officer who died in 2015.
Hemme’s attorneys, part of the Innocence Project, highlighted the injustice in her case, emphasizing the ignored evidence that could have exonerated her decades ago. The fight to secure her freedom underscores ongoing issues within the justice system regarding wrongful convictions and prosecutorial resistance to overturning them
