Missouri high court clears the way for a woman's release after 43 years in prison

CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court has cleared the way for the release of a Missouri woman whose murder conviction was overturned after she served 43 years in prison, but she still remained in custody as of Thursday evening.

A circuit court judge ruled last month that Sandra Hemme’s attorneys showed evidence of her “actual innocence,” and an appeals court ruled she should be freed while her case is reviewed.

But Hemme’s immediate freedom has been complicated by lengthy sentences she received for crimes she committed while behind bars — a total of 12 years, which were piled on top of the life sentence she received for her murder conviction.

Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey took his fight to keep her locked up to the state’s highest court, but her attorneys argued that keeping her incarcerated any longer would be a “draconian outcome.”

Her release appeared imminent after the Missouri Supreme Court refused to undo lower court rulings that allowed her to be released on her own recognizance and placed in the custody of her sister and brother-in-law in the Missouri town of Higginsville.

No details have been released on when Hemme will be freed. One of her attorneys, Sean O’Brien, filed a motion Thursday asking that a judge “hold an emergency status conference at the earliest possible time” and order Hemme's release.

Hemme’s lawyers, in an emailed statement to The Associated Press, said her family “is eager and ready to reunite with her, and the Department of Corrections should respect and promptly” release her.

Hemme, now 64, had been serving a life sentence at a prison northeast of Kansas City after she was twice convicted of murder in the death of library worker Patricia Jeschke.

She’s been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project.

“This Court finds that the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence,” Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman concluded after an extensive review.

Horsman noted that Hemme was heavily sedated and in a “malleable mental state” when investigators repeatedly questioned her in a psychiatric hospital. Her attorneys described her ultimate confession as “often monosyllabic responses to leading questions.” Other than this confession, no evidence linked her to the crime, her trial prosecutor said.

The St. Joseph Police Department, meanwhile, ignored evidence pointing to Michael Holman — a fellow officer, who died in 2015 — and the prosecution wasn’t told about FBI results that could have cleared her, so it was never disclosed before her trials, the judge found.

“This Court finds that the evidence shows that Ms. Hemme’s statements to police are so unreliable and that the evidence pointing to Michael Holman as the perpetrator of the crime so objective and probative that no reasonable juror would find Ms. Hemme guilty,” Horsman concluded in his 118-page ruling. “She is the victim of a manifest injustice.”