Just when it seems our legal system has sunk into a quagmire, a court development in Missouri shines as a beacon of hope.
On June 14 in Chillicothe up in northwest Missouri, Judge Ryan Horsman issued a judgment that could correct a manifest injustice that has kept a wrongfully convicted woman behind bars for 43 years.
Horsman ruled that Sandra Hemme, now 64 years old, was innocent of the murder she was accused of in St. Joseph, Missouri, back in 1980. The judge also found evidence that could have helped her defense but was not disclosed by Buchanan County prosecutors.
Hemme was convicted of murdering Patricia Jeschke, a 31-year-old librarian who was found stabbed to death in her apartment. Her mother discovered her body in a pool of blood on the bedroom floor. A pillow had been placed over Jeschke’s face and her hands were bound with telephone cords behind her back. There were no signs of forced entry to Jeschke’s home.
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Police arrested Hemme after she gave a series of conflicting statements admitting involvement in the crime. Hemme talked to detectives while undergoing psychiatric treatment for mental and emotional problems at the St. Joseph State Hospital. Hemme was questioned by police while she was under anti-psychotic medications.
The only evidence connecting Hemme to Jeschke’s murder were Hemme’s statements to the police.
Last year, as Hemme was still serving a life sentence in the state prison in Chillicothe, lawyers for the New York-based Innocence Project filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging her conviction. The group says it is the longest-known wrongful incarceration of any woman in America.
In January, Judge Horsman held an evidentiary hearing on Hemme’s claims. Eight witnesses testified, including police officers who investigated the crime, a prosecutor who brought the charge and a lawyer who had defended Hemme during one of her court cases.
During the hearing, evidence was presented that showed the state failed to disclose substantial evidence supporting her defense, that her statements were unreliable and the person who committed the crime was likely a former St. Joseph police officer named Michael Holman, who is now deceased.
Among the findings were that the victim’s earrings were found amongst jewelry recovered from Michael Holman’s home, that Holman tried to use the victim’s credit card after her murder and that black hair consistent with Holman’s hair was found in the victim’s bed. In addition, witnesses who lived near Jeschke’s apartment described a white pickup truck parked in the neighborhood similar in description to one owned by Holman.
“Michael Holman’s links to the murder are substantial and objective,” the judge wrote in his 118-page judgment.
Holman was later convicted of insurance fraud and burglary. He was arrested in a “peeping tom” incident in 1981. He served two years in prison on insurance fraud. He died in 2015 at age 57.
“The court finds that details of Ms. Hemme’s statements that could be corroborated by other sources show she had neither motive nor opportunity to commit this crime,” Judge Horsman wrote. “This court finds that the evidence as a whole establishes that Ms. Hemme’s statements inculpating herself are inconsistent, contradicted by physical evidence and accounts of reliable, independent witnesses, and that Ms. Hemme’s impaired psychiatric condition when questioned substantially undermine the reliability of those statements as evidence of guilt.”
The judge also found “that the evidence directly ties Holman to this crime and murder scene,” and he wrote “the records shows the St. Joseph Police Department failed to seriously investigate Holman as a suspect.”
This is not the first time a court has found that the police and prosecutors in St. Joseph sent an innocent person to prison. At about the same time as the Jeschke murder case, police arrested a man named Melvin Reynolds for the murder of a four-year-old boy, Eric Christgen, that occurred in 1978.
Reynolds was sentenced to life imprisonment after confessing to the crime under intense police questioning. Reynolds was released from prison in 1983 after a serial killer named Charles Hatcher confessed to the little boy’s abduction and murder.
At a time when some U.S. Supreme Court justices are accepting valuable gifts, and important court cases are being needlessly delayed, Judge Horsman’s thoughtful and quick decision is a sign that at least in the remote parts of Missouri, justice is still being served.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office is asking for an appellate review. If Horsman’s ruling is allowed to stand, Sandra Hemme should be discharged from prison.