The Missouri Supreme Court has facilitated the release of a Sandra Hemme, a 64-year-old Missouri woman, by overturning her murder conviction after 43 years of imprisonment. She’s been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project. Yet as of Thursday evening, she remained in custody. A circuit court judge ruled last month that Hemme’s attorneys showed evidence of her “actual innocence,” and an appeals court ruled she should be freed while her case is reviewed, The Associated Press reports. 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.
Though no details have been given on when Hemme will be freed, 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. Hemme 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. But that conviction was wrongful, ruled Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman, after an extensive review. “This Court finds that the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence,” Horsman concluded. Among the problems with the case is that the St. Joseph Police Department ignored evidence that pointing to an officer, who died in 2015. Prosecutors were also never told about FBI results that could have cleared her, the judge found.