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It is not yet known whether Sandra Hemme will receive compensation for having her life ruined by a wrongful conviction.
On Friday, a 64-year-old woman was released from prison in the US state of Missouri, who was found not guilty of murder after 43 years – writes the AP news agency.
According to the legal staff of the Innocence Project, Sandra Hemme is the woman who has spent the longest wrongful conviction in prison in the United States. On June 14, the court ruled that the woman’s lawyers had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that proved Sandra Hemme’s actual innocence, and based on this, it overturned the life sentence imposed 43 years ago. The release was not without bumps, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey tried to keep the woman behind bars even despite the court order. At Friday’s court hearing, Judge Ryan Horsman then stated that if Sandra Hemme was not released within hours, Andrew Bailey himself would have to appear in court on Tuesday morning.
Sandra Hemme was sentenced to life in prison for the 1980 murder of library employee Patricia Jeschke. Although the woman confessed, the prosecution had no substantial evidence, and the authorities later found out that the woman was heavily drugged when the detectives interrogated her in a psychiatric hospital after the murder. Meanwhile, police ignored evidence pointing to a colleague who died in 2015, Michael Holman. The prosecutor’s office was not informed of the results of the FBI investigations that could have cleared Sandra Hemme, meaning that the court decided in the absence of key information at the time. According to the evidence just presented, the police van of the likely perpetrator was seen in front of the murdered woman’s apartment, and the man also tried to use her credit card, and her earrings were found in the policeman’s apartment.
Despite the wrong verdict, the prosecution wanted to keep Sandra Hemme behind bars because she was convicted several times during her years in prison. In 1984 he was sentenced to two years for “offering to commit violence”, and in 1996 he received an additional 10 years in prison for attacking a prison employee with a razor blade. Andrew Bailey argued that he should now serve even those sentences because he believes Sandra Hemme poses a safety risk to herself and others. However, his lawyers, with the agreement of several legal experts, saw that it would be draconian to keep him in prison after what happened.
In his report, Judge Ryan Horsman called Sandra Hemme the victim of an obvious injustice, who did not want to speak to reporters when she was released. It is not yet clear whether, after 43 years of innocence, the woman can expect any compensation from the state, and if so, in what amount.
Source: nepszava.hu
