A scenario worthy of a film. After spending 43 years in prison in Missouri, in the United States, for “manslaughter”, Sandra Hemme, a 63-year-old American, will be released following a miscarriage of justice. Sentenced to life in 1980 for the murder of Patricia Jeschke, a 31-year-old librarian, she only confessed “under pressure and the threat of the death penalty”, according to her lawyers, interviewed by Associated Press.
They say the only evidence linking their client to the victim are “extremely contradictory” and “factually impossible” statements she made to detectives while she was a patient at a psychiatric hospital. When she was interrogated, her wrists were shackled. She was so sedated that she “could not hold her head up” or “articulate anything beyond monosyllabic responses,” they said.
In his ruling Friday, Livingston County Presiding Judge Ryan Horsman ultimately overturned the ruling and demanded Sandra Hemme’s release “within 30 days unless prosecutors try her again.”
A police officer who died in 2015, the real culprit?
Sandra Hemme’s lawyers, who come from the “Innocence Project”, an association which serves to demonstrate the innocence of people wrongfully convicted, pointed out that the authorities in charge of the investigation at the time had suppressed evidence targeting a another suspect. Michael Holman, a 22-year-old police officer in 1980, simply indicated that he had used the victim’s credit card on the day of the crime, after finding her purse in a ditch.
However, as the Court notes, cited by the Huffpost, he had the same van as the one seen near the crime scene, an unconfirmed alibi, the discovery of Patricia Jeschke’s earrings in his apartment. Despite these elements, the investigation was closed in four days. This suspect died in 2015. If Sandra Hemme is exonerated, her prison sentence would mark the longest wrongful conviction of a woman in United States history, notes AP.