Missourian gets new murder hearing 40 years after conviction

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office has reportedly agreed to an evidentiary hearing for a woman convicted of murder in the 1980s who has maintained her innocence for more than 40 years.

Sandra Hemme was convicted in 1985 after a one-day trial in the 1980 murder of library worker Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, who was found killed in her apartment.

Hemme’s attorneys with The Innocence Project, a criminal justice nonprofit, say she was wrongfully convicted after police allegedly sedated her while she was experiencing a mental crisis and coerced her into making false statements. Her lawyers filed a petition for habeas relief — meant to review the validity of her conviction — in February in Livingston County, arguing there is evidence to prove her innocence in Jeschke’s murder.

AG Andrew Bailey’s office said in their response that Hemme’s attorneys have “alleged facts that if true may entitle her to relief,” according to The Kansas City Star.

Hemme was 20 years old at the time of her conviction in Jeschke’s murder and was a patient at St. Joseph’s State Hospital, where she received treatment for various health conditions. She had been a psychiatric patient since age 12, according to The Innocence Project. After her arrest, when Hemme was receiving treatment in a hospital and taking sedative drugs, investigators apparently used coercive language to get incriminating statements from the suspect that would ultimately implicate her in Jeschke’s murder. During her day-long trial, Hemme’s lawyer at the time did not present any witnesses. During the trial, the jury did not hear that Hemme’s DNA was not linked to any of the hair or fingerprints found at the crime scene. No “physical, forensic, or eyewitness evidence” tied Hemme to the scene, according to her current attorneys.

The Innocence Project says evidence instead points to former St. Joseph police officer Michael Holman, whose white pickup truck was spotted near the crime scene around the time of Jeschke’s murder and who attempted to use the victim’s credit card the day after she died. Holman later spent time in prison for other crimes before he died in 2015.

Hemme’s attorneys alleged that St. Joseph police helped cover up for Holman, and that her case is not the first in which investigators have coerced suspects into making false statements.

The next hearing date in Hemme’s case is scheduled for July 10.