Three courts agree that a woman deemed wrongfully convicted should be freed. She still isn't

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to News@lemmy.world – 315 points – Three courts agree that a woman deemed wrongfully convicted should be freed. She still isn't
apnews.com

A circuit judge, an appellate court and the Missouri Supreme Court agree that a woman whose murder conviction was overturned should be free after 43 years in prison.

Yet Sandra Hemme is still behind bars, leaving her lawyers and legal experts puzzled.

“I’ve never seen it,” said Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court judge and professor and dean emeritus of Saint Louis University Law School. “Once the courts have spoken, the courts should be obeyed.”

The lone holdup to freedom for the 64-year-old woman is opposition from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who has filed court actions seeking to force her to serve additional years for decades-old prison assault cases. The warden at the Chillicothe Correctional Center has declined to let Hemme go, based on Bailey’s actions.

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Punishing a person for protecting themselves in a violent hell-hole that she would not have been in if she hadn't been put there wrongly by the state is seriously fucked up. She almost has a case for entrapment. If the state had not put her in prison, she would not have had the means, the motive, nor the opportunity to commit the crime. And since she was wrongly put there, the state should be liable for any crimes committed.

I think that attorney general should have to walk in her shoes for a bit and then have someone hold up his release

Rarely does one ascend to positions of profound influence with the capacity for empathy.

That’s entirely too logical. Repubs hate their constituents. They hate women. He’s (AG) doing the only thing he knows how: punishing someone weaker than him.

Keeping people proven innocent in prison should be a massively punishable offence

massively punishable offense

Hear, hear.

Everyone involved in blocking or preventing her release should get prison time and lifetime ban from working in legal, law enforcement, public service.

Man, we can't even convict an ex-president for all the crimes he committed while in office. I have little hope in any justice these days.

It's like some people wake up in the morning and ask themselves "How can I be the worst person?"

Sadly for the rest of us, the answer to that question one day was "run for office"

Bailey, who was appointed attorney general ... has a history of opposing overturning convictions, even when local prosecutors cite evidence of actual innocence.

In 2023, Bailey’s office argued against then-St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s effort to overturn the murder conviction of Lamar Johnson, who was imprisoned 28 years. A St. Louis judge sided with Johnson, who was freed.

Bailey’s office also argued in court in May against freeing Christopher Dunn, who has spent 33 years in prison for a 1990 killing that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore determined that Dunn probably didn’t commit. A judge is still deciding that case.

And Bailey is opposing St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s effort to set aside the murder conviction of Marcellus Williams. A hearing is Aug. 21 — just a month before Williams is scheduled to be executed. Testing unavailable at the time of the 1998 stabbing death found another person’s DNA on the knife, but not Williams’.

I would love to hear his justification for all of these. Is it just the for-profit prison money, or the pride of not being wrong?

Prisons for profit is the entire problem.

In this case they are easy to appease. Just replace the woman the courts have ordered to be set free with the attorney general. They can even charge more since the piece of shit will need special accommodations.

Just bc you didn't commit a crime doesn't mean you are free. - Supreme court