A woman in Missouri whose murder conviction was overturned after serving 43 years of a life sentence was released on Friday, despite recent efforts by the attorney general to keep her behind bars.
Sandra Hemme freed after 43 years
Sandra Hemme, 64, walked out of a prison in Chillicothe, Missouri, hours after a judge threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt if they continued to fight her release. She reunited with her family at a nearby park, embracing her sister, daughter, and granddaughter.
“You were just a baby when your mom sent me a picture of you,” Hemme told her granddaughter. “You looked just like your mamma when you were little and you still look like her.” Her granddaughter laughed, responding, “I get that a lot.”
Longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman in the US
Hemme had been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the US, according to her legal team at the Innocence Project.
The judge originally ruled on June 14 that Hemme’s attorneys had established “clear and convincing evidence” of her “actual innocence,” overturning her conviction. However, Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey fought her release in court.
“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,” said Hemme’s attorney, Sean O’Brien. “It shouldn’t be this hard to free an innocent person.”
Judge threatens attorney general’s office
During a court hearing on Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman warned that if Hemme wasn’t released within hours, Bailey himself would have to appear in court on Tuesday morning. He threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt and criticized them for instructing prison officials to ignore his order to release Hemme.
“I would suggest you never do that,” Horsman said. “To call someone and tell them to disregard a court order is wrong.”
Hemme’s immediate plans and future challenges
Upon her release, Hemme declined to address reporters. O’Brien noted she was heading straight to her father’s side, as he was hospitalized with kidney failure and recently moved to palliative care. “This has been a long time coming,” O’Brien said, adding that the delays had caused the family “irreparable harm and emotional distress.”
“She’s going to need help,” O’Brien said, pointing out that Hemme won’t be eligible for social security due to her long incarceration.
Legal battles and public reaction
Over the past month, a circuit judge, an appellate court, and the Missouri Supreme Court all agreed that Hemme should be released, yet she remained behind bars, leaving her lawyers and legal experts puzzled. “I’ve never seen it,” said Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court judge and professor emeritus at Saint Louis University Law School. “Once the courts have spoken, the courts should be obeyed.”
Bailey had filed court motions to force Hemme to serve additional years for decades-old prison assault cases. The warden at the Chillicothe Correctional Center initially refused to release Hemme based on Bailey’s actions.
Evidence of innocence and the attorney general’s stance
Judge Horsman ruled on June 14 that “the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence.” A state appeals court ruled on July 8 that Hemme should be set free while it continued to review the case.
The next day, July 9, Horsman ruled Hemme should be released to go home with her sister. The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday declined to undo the lower court rulings that allowed her to be released on her own recognizance and placed with her sister and brother-in-law.
Bailey responded with another request late Thursday, asking the Circuit Court to reconsider.
Hemme was serving a life sentence for the 1980 stabbing death of library worker Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, Missouri. Her immediate release was complicated by sentences she received for crimes committed while in prison, including a 10-year sentence in 1996 for attacking a prison worker with a razor blade and a two-year sentence in 1984 for “offering to commit violence.” Bailey argued that Hemme posed a safety risk and should serve those sentences now.
Her attorneys countered that keeping her incarcerated longer would be a “draconian outcome.” Legal experts, like Peter Joy from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, agreed, calling the effort to keep Hemme in prison “a shock to the conscience of any decent human being,” given the strong evidence of her innocence.