A woman whose murder conviction was overturned after 43 years in prison has been released, despite Missouri's attorney-general fighting for more than a month to keep her behind bars.
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Sandra Hemme, 63, walked free from jail after a judge threatened to hold the lawyer general's office in contempt if it continued to fight against her release.
She reunited with her family at a nearby park, where she hugged her daughter and granddaughter. Her sister, Joyce Ann Kays, was all grins.
The judge originally ruled on June 14 that Hemme's lawyers had established "clear and convincing evidence" of "actual innocence" and overturned the conviction. But Republican Lawyer General Andrew Bailey fought her release in the courts.
During a court hearing Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman said that if Hemme wasn't released by a designated time, he wanted Bailey himself to appear in court Tuesday morning, and threatened to hold the lawyer general's office in contempt.
He described her as "the victim of a manifest injustice."
Hemme's father has been hospitalised with kidney failure and moved to palliative care.
"He wants only to see his daughter free in his lifetime, just as Ms Hemme wants nothing more than to be at her father's bedside at this time," her lawyer, Sean O'Brien, said in a court filing Thursday.
He added that further delay was causing their family "irreparable harm and emotional distress."
Over the last month, a circuit judge, an appellate court and the Missouri Supreme Court all agreed Hemme should be released.
The lone hold-up to freedom came from the attorney- general, who filed court actions seeking to force her to serve additional years for decades-old prison assault cases.
Hemme was serving a life sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Centre for the 1980 stabbing death of library worker Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, Missouri.
She's been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the US, according to her legal team at the Innocence Project.
Her immediate freedom was complicated by sentences she received for crimes committed while behind bars. She received a 10-year sentence in 1996 for attacking a prison worker with a razor blade, and a two-year sentence in 1984 for "offering to commit violence." Bailey had argued that Hemme represents a safety risk to herself and others and she should start serving those sentences now.
Her lawyers countered that keeping her incarcerated any longer would be a "draconian outcome."
Horsman, after an extensive review, concluded in June that Hemme was heavily sedated and in a "malleable mental state" when investigators repeatedly questioned her in a psychiatric hospital after the killing.
Her lawyers described her ultimate confession as "often monosyllabic responses to leading questions." Other than the confession, no evidence linked her to the crime, her trial prosecutor said.
The St Joseph Police Department, meanwhile, ignored evidence pointing to Michael Holman — a fellow officer, who died in 2015 — and the prosecution wasn't told about FBI results that could have cleared Hemme, so it was never disclosed before her trials, the judge found.
Evidence presented to Horsman showed that Holman's pickup truck was seen outside Jeschke's apartment, that he tried to use her credit card, and that her earrings were found in his home.
Australian Associated Press
