America's longest wrongly-incarcerated female prisoner Sandra Hemme hits release date snag as  Missouri AG fights to keep her behind bars after judge overturned conviction

An appeals court has ordered the release of a Missouri woman whose murder conviction had recently been overturned after she served 43 years in prison - but the state's attorney general office is attempting to keep her behind bars. 

Sandra 'Sandy' Hemme, 64, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment at a prison northeast of Kansas City after the slaying of 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke in 1980.  

But on July 8, a panel of appeals court judges ordered her release after Judge Ryan W. Horsman found her innocent and declared officials at the time forced to make false statements.

The Missouri judge also stated in his last month's decision that the wrongfully accused woman must be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors decide to retry her.

The appeals court granted Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey's request to review Horsman's decision but told Horsman meanwhile to establish her bail terms and set her free.

The attorney general's office then asked the appellate court to reconsider, saying the court didn't give them enough time to argue against her release. 

Bailey's office also argued that Hemme was sentenced decades ago to 12 years for violence in prison, and she would start serving that penalty now. Her attorneys responded today that keeping her incarcerated any longer would be a 'draconian outcome.'

After an extensive review, Horsman found that Hemme was heavily sedated and in a 'malleable mental state' when investigators repeatedly questioned her in a psychiatric hospital at the time. 

Police ignored evidence pointing to a discredited fellow officer who died in 2015, and the prosecution wasn't told about FBI results that could have cleared her, so it was never disclosed before her trials.

The prosecutor at her trial agreed, four decades later, that nothing linked her to the crime other than her confession, which followed multiple contradictory statements, the judge noted.

Her attorneys described her ultimate confession in a court filing as 'often monosyllabic responses to leading questions.'

'She is the victim of a manifest injustice,' Horsman concluded in his 118-page ruling. 'This Court finds that the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence. 

Hemme was arrested weeks after the death of Jeschke, who lived in St. Joseph, Missouri. 

After Jeschke missed work on November 13, 1980, her worried mother climbed through an apartment window and discovered her daughter´s nude body on the floor, surrounded by blood, with her hands tied behind her back and a telephone cord and a pair of pantyhose wrapped around her throat. A knife was under her head.

These and other details were released to the media by the St. Joseph police chief, Robert Hayes, as the crime prompted a massive investigation.

Meanwhile, the department took only a cursory look at Michael Holman, a since discredited St. Joseph police officer who was being investigated for insurance fraud and burglaries, and ended that investigation after evidence cast doubt on his alibi. Holman's plea deal included a promise not to prosecute him for any other 'criminal matters now under investigation.' 

He died in 2015, according to the judge's finding of facts.

Later, it turned out that Hemme had been discharged from the hospital and hitchhiked out of town hours before Jeschke was last seen alive. She showed up that evening at her parents' home, more than 100 miles to the east. 

Hemme is now the longest held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the US, according to her legal team at the Innocence Project.

=