The conviction of a woman who was a psychiatric patient when she framed herself in a Missouri murder in 1980 has been overturned after spending 43 years behind bars.
Sandra Hemme’s lawyers say a disgraced police officer was responsible for the murder of Patricia Jeschke, a 31-year-old library employee, and this is the longest time a woman has been imprisoned for a wrongful conviction in the history of USA.
Judge Ryan Horsman ruled Friday that the 63-year-old woman had established evidence of actual innocence, saying her trial attorney was ineffective and that prosecutors had failed to reveal evidence that would have helped her.
He said she should be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors retry her, but her lawyers, from the New York-based Innocence Project, are seeking her immediate release.
“We are grateful to the Court for recognizing the grave injustice that Ms. Hemme has suffered for more than four decades,” they said in a statement, vowing to continue their efforts to dismiss the charges and reunite Hemme with her family.
Mrs Jeschke’s brutal murder hit the headlines after her worried mother climbed through the window of her flat in St Joseph. Missouriand found her daughter’s naked body on the floor surrounded by blood on November 13, 1980.
Read more from Sky News:
Eight-year-old boy in critical condition after shooting at water park
They call for an “urgent explanation” after a police car was filmed hitting a cow
His hands were tied behind his back with a telephone cord, a pair of socks around his throat and a knife under his head.
Ms. Hemme was shackled with leather handcuffs and so heavily sedated that she “could not hold her head up” or “articulate anything but monosyllabic responses” when she was first questioned about Ms. Jeschke’s death, according to her lawyers.
In a petition seeking her exoneration, they alleged that authorities ignored their “wildly contradictory” statements and suppressed evidence implicating Michael Holman, then a 22-year-old police officer who tried to use the slain woman’s credit card on the day she was killed. his body was found.
The judge found that “there is no evidence, other than Ms. Hemme’s unreliable statements, that connects her to the crime.”
“To the contrary,” he added, “this Court finds that the evidence directly links Holman to the scene of the crime and murder.”
Holman, who had been a suspect and was questioned at the time, was fired following investigations into theft and insurance fraud, and died in 2015.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
