Sandra Hemme then and now. (Image: Courtesy of the Hemme family via Innocence Project)
A woman who has spent more than four decades in prison for a murder she said she did not commit could get a chance at freedom this week after a judge ruled she will get a hearing to show evidence she says proves her innocence and points to a corrupt cop as the person who committed the crime.
Sandra Hemme, 63, was wrongly convicted for the Nov. 12, 1980 murder of library worker Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, Missouri, after her lawyers said police exploited her mental illness and coerced her into making false statements while she was sedated and being treated with antipsychotic medication for hallucinatory episodes, according to the Innocence Project.
In February, Hemme’s attorneys filed a petition for habeas relief in the 43rd Circuit Court of Livingston County based on compelling new evidence of her innocence.
In a rare move, the Missouri attorney general’s office has agreed to an evidentiary hearing for her. Lawyers are expected to set a date for the hearing on July 10.
The AG’s office said attorneys have “alleged facts that, if true, may entitle her to relief,” the Kansas City Star reported.
On their website, the Innocence Project summarized the details about Hemme, who they say is the longest-known wrongly incarcerated woman in the U.S. and who has never given up hope that her name would one day be cleared.
Her attorneys said the state withheld new evidence proving her innocence for decades and that the then 20-year-old had no connection to the victim. She was a psychiatric patient at the time of Jeschke’s death, receiving treatment at St. Joseph’s State Hospital for auditory hallucinations, derealization, and drug misuse when she was targeted by police, the Innocence Project said.
“Hemme had spent the majority of her life starting at age 12 in inpatient psychiatric treatment,” the Innocence Project said.
The lawyers said police interviewed her “under extremely coercive circumstances” for hours while Hemme was in the hospital.
“At some points, she was so heavily medicated that she was unable to even hold her head up and was restrained and strapped to a chair,” the Innocence Project said.
Throughout the interrogations, her statements conflicted with known facts of the crime, her lawyers said.
Her statements varied from initially not mentioning a murder to claiming to have seen a man kill her, to having extrasensory perception and admitting to violently taking Jeschke’s life with a hunting knife.
“I think I stabbed her with it,” Hemme said, the Star reported. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
At her one-day trial, her lawyer presented no witnesses, and the jury did not hear how police obtained her statements — the only “evidence” against her at trial.
She also was “excluded as a source of all the hairs and fingerprints taken from the crime scene.”
“There was no physical, forensic, or eyewitness evidence that linked her to the victim or the crime scene,” the Innocence Project said. “Evidence pointed to a St. Joseph police officer as a suspect in Ms. Jeschke’s killing.”
The corrupt cop, Michael Holman, a St. Joseph police officer, admitted to being near the victim’s home at the time of the murder, and his white pickup truck was parked nearby, lawyers said. Holman had also tried to use her credit card the day after her murder.
Lawyers said police failed to turn over favorable evidence to the accused that implicated Holman as the person who killed Jeschke.
Jeschke’s wishbone earrings were found in Holman’s possession, along with jewelry stolen during another home burglary.
Witnesses could not corroborate Holman’s alibi. Holman claimed he was at a motel near the victim’s home during the murder with a woman named Mary.
“All three witnesses from the motel and attached gas station told police they did not remember seeing Officer Holman or Mary that day,” the Innocence Project said.
Holman died in 2015.
Many of the same St. Joseph police who worked on Hemme’s case also worked on a case two years earlier of another wrongfully convicted person, Melvin Lee Reynolds, who also had a mental illness and was at St. Joseph’s State Hospital, who was later exonerated.
“And much like in Ms. Hemme’s case, officers obtained an alleged confession — a statement that did not align with the known facts of the crime — from Mr. Reynolds after interrogating him repeatedly,” the Innocence Project lawyers said.
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