Sandra Hemme, the Missouri woman who spent 43 years in prison for a murder she did not commit, has sued the city of St. Joseph and eight police officers in a 10-count federal lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution, a coerced confession and conspiracy.
"There was never any objective evidence tying Plaintiff (Hemme) to the crime," the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit also points the finger at a former police officer, Michael Holman, as the killer of librarian Patricia Jeschke in 1980.
"To protect Holman, the Defendants concealed evidence of his guilt and chose not to follow the evidence leading to Holman," according to the lawsuit. Holman died in 2015.
Hemme served the longest sentence of any wrongly convicted woman in American history, her lawyers have said. She was finally exonerated and freed last year after a lengthy legal battle that saw the Missouri Attorney General fighting to overturn her innocence ruling.
A year ago, in July 2024, Livingston County Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman overturned Hemme’s conviction — writing that she was “the victim of a manifest injustice.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey battled all the way to the state Supreme Court to keep Hemme in prison. She won her final freedom after the Missouri Court of Appeals rejected all of Bailey's arguments, and in March the Buchanan County prosecutor declined to refile charges.
Hemme's lawsuit, filed last Thursday in federal district court in Kansas City, paints a picture of a police department hell-bent on framing her for the murder.
Police allegedly "suppressed and destroyed evidence" that implicated Holman, including fingerprint evidence that showed Hemme was not at the crime scene. The lawsuit also says police ignored the fact that the victim's earrings were found at Holman's home, and that he tried to use her stolen credit card.
In fact, Hemme "was not even in St. Joseph when the murder occurred," according to the lawsuit.
It also says investigators knew Hemme was on powerful antipsychotic medication during her eight interrogations and "taking advantage of her extreme vulnerability, coerced her into confessing to the murder."
Hemme's case should help others wrongly convicted of murder win their freedom. That's because the appeals court directly addressed the issue of false confessions in its 75-page opinion.
“It does, I think, put new teeth in some of those 1940s and 50s and 60s U.S. Supreme Court decisions that distrust confessions where there are vulnerable subjects and persistent police questioning,” attorney Sean O’Brien told KCUR.
The lawsuit names the city of St. Joseph and eight police officers as defendants. Six of them are now dead, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also charges that the alleged misconduct around the Hemme investigation was just one example of a police department steeped in that behavior.
St. Joseph officers were not punished for misconduct, "creating a culture of impunity that allowed and encouraged further misconduct," according to the lawsuit.
The Court of Appeals came to the same conclusion when it ruled in favor of Hemme: “We are left with the same unmistakable impression that the police ignored and buried evidence coming into its possession.”
Since her release, Hemme — now 65 years old — has been living with her sister in the small town of Higginsville, Missouri, and her lawyers say she is doing well.
