Sandra Hemme Is Exonerated After 44-Year Battle to Prove Her Innocence

Sandra Hemme.

(December 6, 2024 — St. Joseph, Missouri) Forty-four years after she was falsely accused of a 1980 murder, Sandra Hemme is exonerated. Ms. Hemme’s exoneration follows her July 19, 2024 release after more than four decades in prison. She was the longest-known wrongly incarcerated woman in American history.  

Earlier this year, Livingston County Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman granted Ms. Hemme’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, finding that her due process rights were violated during her 1985 trial for second-degree murder and that she had proven actual innocence during an evidentiary hearing held last January.  In October, the Western District of the Missouri Court of Criminal Appeals issued an emphatic and unanimous decision denying Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s appeal of Judge Horsman’s decision, and ordered Ms. Hemme be unconditionally released from the charges unless the state filed to retry her within ten days. That deadline passed without state action, and, on Tuesday December 3, Judge Horsman issued an order permanently and unconditionally vacating Ms. Hemme’s conviction and sentence, ending the case.  

 “We are overjoyed that this 44-year nightmare is finally over for Sandy and her family, but it is bittersweet,” said Jane Pucher, Ms. Hemme’s Innocence Project attorney. “It is clear that from the beginning of this case Sandra should have never been a suspect.”

No witnesses or physical evidence linked Ms. Hemme to the murder, the victim, or the crime scene. The only evidence against her were her own unreliable confessions: statements taken while she was being treated at the state psychiatric hospital, in extreme pain, and forcibly medicated with drugs designed to overpower her will.

As the case against her developed, the St. Joseph Police Department hid evidence implicating one of their own: a fellow police officer who was found using the victim’s credit card the day after the murder, whose truck was seen parked near the victim’s home at the time she was killed, and who was caught hiding the victim’s earrings in his home.  

In its June ruling overturning her conviction, the habeas court found that Ms. Hemme proved her actual innocence, noting that “the only evidence linking Ms. Hemme to the crime was that of her own inconsistent, disproven statements, statements that were taken while she was in psychiatric crisis and physical pain.” Meanwhile, the evidence implicating the police officer was so significant, “it would be difficult to imagine that the State could prove Ms. Hemme’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt based on the weight of the evidence now available that ties [the officer] to this victim and crime and excludes Ms. Hemme.” 

“Since her release in July, Sandy has been savoring every minute with her family.  She is grateful to celebrate the holidays with her mother, siblings, granddaughter, nieces and nephews, now that she is finally and fully free,” said Andrew Lee, Ms. Hemme’s Innocence Project attorney.

Sandra Hemme is represented by Innocence Project Senior Staff Attorney Jane Pucher, Staff Attorney Andrew Lee, and Post-Conviction Litigation Fellow Kaila Johnson. She is also represented by co-counsel UMKC Professor of Law Sean O’Brien.