A woman who spent 43 years in jail has been released following the overturning of her murder conviction.
Sandra Hemme, 64, was released from jail in Chillicothe on Friday (July 19) after Missouri’s attorney general fought for a month against her release in court.
Hemme was originally sentenced to life behind bars for the fatal stabbing of library worker Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1980.
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A judge had previously ruled that Hemme's attorneys had shown 'clear and convincing evidence' of 'actual innocence' and overturned her conviction, as per NBC News.
However, the Missouri Attorney General attempted to block her release after a lawyer from the office called the prison and argued that two unrelated prison sentences - coming to 12 years - should keep her behind bars, as per The Independent.
According to NBC News, Judge Ryan Horsman said that if she wasn't released by a certain time, then he wanted Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey to appear in court on Tuesday as he threatened to hold the attorney's office in contempt of court.
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The Missouri Corrections Department then announced that Hemme would be released before 6.pm.
Judge Horsman also told off Bailey's office for calling the prison, adding: "I would suggest you never do that.
"To call someone and tell them to disregard a court order is wrong.”
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After a detailed review of the case, Horsman had concluded in June that Hemme had been heavily sedated and was in a 'malleable mental state' when she was questioned by investigators about the killing in a psychiatric hospital.
Her attorneys also said that 'at some points, she was so heavily medicated that she was unable to even hold her head up and was restrained and strapped to a chair'.
Sandra's legal team at the Innocence Project said that she was the 'longest-known wrongly incarcerated woman in the US'.
Her attorney Sean O’Brien also highlighted the huge struggle that the team had to secure her release.
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He said: “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.
“It shouldn’t be this hard to free an innocent person.”
The attorney had previously spoken of how delays to Sandra's release had caused 'irreparable harm and emotional distress' to Sandra's family.
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In his report about the case, Horsman called Sandra 'the victim of a manifest injustice'.
She was reunited with her daughter, granddaughter and sister in a nearby park, where she hugged them.
Two of Hemme's relatives were in court on Friday, but did not talk after the hearing.
Hemme's father has been moved to pallative care after being hospitalized with kidney failure, and her attorney says that 'he wants only to see his daughter free in his lifetime, just as Ms. Hemme wants nothing more than to be at her father’s bedside at this time'.
O'Brien said that Hemme would be seeing her father after her release, adding: "This has been a long time coming."
UNILAD has contacted the Missouri Attorney General Office for comment.
Kit Roberts