Posted on 06/16/2024 7:24:44 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
A judge has overturned the conviction of a Missouri woman who was a psychiatric patient when she incriminated herself in a 1980 killing that her attorneys argue was actually committed by a now-discredited police officer.
Judge Ryan Horsman ruled late Friday that Sandra Hemme, who has spent 43 years behind bars, had established evidence of actual innocence and must be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors retry her. He said her trial counsel was ineffective and prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her.
Her attorneys say this is the longest time a women has been been incarcerated for a wrongful conviction. They filed a motion seeking her immediate release.
“We are grateful to the Court for acknowledging the grave injustice Ms. Hemme has endured for more than four decades,” her attorneys said in a statement, promising to keep up their efforts to dismiss the charges and reunite Hemme with her family.
A spokesperson for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey didn't immediately respond to a text or email message seeking comment Saturday.
Hemme was shackled in leather wrist restraints and so heavily sedated that she “could not hold her head up straight” or “articulate anything beyond monosyllabic responses" when she was first questioned about the death of 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke, according to her lawyers with the New York-based Innocence Project.
They alleged in a petition seeking her exoneration that authorities ignored Hemme's “wildly contradictory” statements and suppressed evidence implicating Michael Holman, a then-police officer who tried to use the slain woman's credit card.
The judge wrote that “no evidence whatsoever outside of Ms. Hemme’s unreliable statements connects her to the crime.”
“In contrast,” he added, “this Court finds that the evidence directly ties Holman to this crime and murder scene.”
(Excerpt) Read more at channel3000.com ...
And that is what she did the following spring, when she agreed to plead guilty to capital murder in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table.
Even that was a challenge; the judge initially rejected her guilty plea because she couldn't share enough details about what happened, saying: “I really didn’t know I had done it until like three days later, you know, when it came out in the paper and on the news.”
will the police officer be tired?
“Missouri woman’s murder conviction tossed after 43 years. Her lawyers say a police officer did it”
Keep in mind that for every one of these false prosecutions resulting in people being wrongly executed (not the case here, but...), there are likely 100 cases of Leftist judges putting murders back on the streets, just to have them kill more even more people, many as innocent as this woman appears to be.
Jail the prosecutor who did not provide exculpatory evidence. Jail the cop, too.
” prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her.”
Sound familiar?
Doesn't matter. I'm pro death penalty, but as the legendary quote says:
Better that 10 guilty men go free than for 1 innocent man to be wrongly convicted.
I'm sure if still alive he is after 43 years. I'm old and tired.
Agree
The cop died in 2015 apparently.
How could anyone..in this case a cop..live with themselves.
Obviously some kind of psycho.
“Better that 10 guilty men go free than for 1 innocent man to be wrongly convicted.”
My response is: “Better 1 innocent man be wrongly executed than 20 innocent people be killed by wrongly freed murderers.”
Dig the body up and throw pig feces on it, then, in a full public display.
As long as you or one of your loved ones is the wrongfully executed innocent person, I can get on board with that.
The crime was over 40 years ago, he's probably in his late 60s or 70s, he's already tired...
You beat me by less than arf an ower.
Stories like this make me more sympathetic to the claim that some innocent black citizens were railroaded by the police/DA.
Black citizens lost faith in the justice system long before conservatives, who have now realized the corruption.
Dr. Clarissa Cole says that fully half the police candidates she flat out failed on their required pre-employment psych eval were hired anyway.
Society is hard, is it not BL, HBH?
Like “adulting” as they say. Hard to do well.
The prosecutor who hid evidence and the officer better go to prison for the rest of their miserable lives.
That poor woman…her entire life stolen from her. There is no way she will be able to make it outside now unless she has wonderful family to take her in.
“As long as you or one of your loved ones is the wrongfully executed innocent person, I can get on board with that.”
I’ll win the Lotto before that happens as my loved ones don’t hang out with the bunch that murders.
But my loved ones are FAR MORE LIKELY to die from a wrongly-released murderer, as one of them is forced to drive into an inner city every day (until she gets a new job).
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