CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court has cleared the way for the release of a Missouri woman whose murder conviction was overturned after she served 43 years in prison, but she still remained in custody as of Thursday evening.
A circuit court judge ruled last month that Sandra Hemme’s attorneys showed evidence of her “actual innocence,” and an appeals court ruled she should be freed while her case is reviewed.
But Hemme’s immediate freedom has been complicated by lengthy sentences she received for crimes she committed while behind bars — a total of 12 years, which were piled on top of the life sentence she received for her murder conviction.
Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey took his fight to keep her locked up to the state’s highest court, but her attorneys argued that keeping her incarcerated any longer would be a “draconian outcome.”
Her release appeared imminent after the Missouri Supreme Court refused to undo lower court rulings that allowed her to be released on her own recognizance and placed in the custody of her sister and brother-in-law in the Missouri town of Higginsville.
No details have been released on when Hemme will be freed. One of her attorneys, Sean O’Brien, filed a motion Thursday asking that a judge “hold an emergency status conference at the earliest possible time” and order Hemme's release.
Hemme’s lawyers, in an emailed statement to The Associated Press, said her family “is eager and ready to reunite with her, and the Department of Corrections should respect and promptly” release her.
Hemme, now 64, had been serving a life sentence at a prison northeast of Kansas City after she was twice convicted of murder in the death of library worker Patricia Jeschke.
She’s been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project.
“This Court finds that the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence,” Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman concluded after an extensive review.
Horsman noted that Hemme was heavily sedated and in a “malleable mental state” when investigators repeatedly questioned her in a psychiatric hospital. Her attorneys described her ultimate confession as “often monosyllabic responses to leading questions.” Other than this 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 her, so it was never disclosed before her trials, the judge found.
“This Court finds that the evidence shows that Ms. Hemme’s statements to police are so unreliable and that the evidence pointing to Michael Holman as the perpetrator of the crime so objective and probative that no reasonable juror would find Ms. Hemme guilty,” Horsman concluded in his 118-page ruling. “She is the victim of a manifest injustice.”
The Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Mo., is seen on Thursday, July 18, 2024. A ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court has paved the way for Sandra Hemme, a woman whose murder conviction was overturned, to be released from prison after serving 43 years. Hemme has been in custody at the Chillicothe Correctional Center. (AP Photo/Heather Hollingsworth)
A road sign pointing the way toward Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Mo., is seen on Thursday, July 18, 2024. A ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court has paved the way for Sandra Hemme, a woman whose murder conviction was overturned, to be released from prison after serving 43 years. Hemme has been in custody at the Chillicothe Correctional Center. (AP Photo/Heather Hollingsworth)
FILE - This undated booking photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows Sandra Hemme. A ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday, July 18, 2024, has opened the way for Hemme, whose murder conviction was overturned, to be released from prison after serving 43 years. (Missouri Department of Corrections via AP, File)
Chillicothe Correctional Center, where Sandra Hemme is being held, is pictured Thursday, July 18, 2024, in Chillicothe, Mo. A ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court has opened the way for Sandra Hemme, a woman whose murder conviction was overturned, to be released from prison after serving 43 years. Hemme has been in custody at the Chillicothe Correctional Center, shown in this Thursday, July 18, 2024, image. (AP Photo/Heather Hollingsworth)
DENVER (AP) — A man sitting in his van after fixing a coffee machine inside a supermarket in the college town of Boulder was the first person killed. In just over a minute, nine more people died in a barrage of gunfire inside and outside the store in 2021 as the shooter targeted and pursued people who were moving.
Survivors fled out of the back of the store to escape the bullets. For more than an hour, others hid in shelves, checkout stands and offices.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, then 21, surrendered after being shot in the leg by a police officer in the store, emerging wearing only his underwear and repeatedly asking officers to call his mother. His attorneys don't dispute he was the shooter.
But why he carried out the mass shooting remains unknown as his trial is set to begin this week.
The closest thing to a possible motive revealed so far was when a mental health evaluator testified during a competency hearing last year that Alissa said he bought firearms to carry out a mass shooting and suggested that he wanted police to kill him.
Robert Olds, whose niece 25-year-old Rikki Olds was the manager Alissa fatally shot at close range near the entrance, plans to sit in his usual spot in the front row throughout the trial. While sometimes wishing Alissa had just been killed, he has held out hope that he would one day learn why his niece, known for her sense of humor and outgoing personality, and the others were targeted. He has become less hopeful of that but is certain Alissa knew what was he was doing.
“I hope he goes to prison for the rest of his life, and then he’ll serve the real penalty when he has to meet God and answer for killing 10 people,” he said.
The trial is expected to focus largely on Alissa's mental state at the time of the shooting. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his lawyers argue he should be acquitted because his mental illness prevented him from being able to tell right from wrong.
The defense argued in a court filing that his relatives said he irrationally believed he was being followed by the FBI and would talk to himself as if he was talking to someone who was not there. However, prosecutors point out Alissa was never previously treated for mental illness and was able to work up to 60 hours a week leading up to the shooting, something they say would not have been possible for someone severely mentally ill.
Alissa is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, 15 counts of attempted murder and other offenses including having six high-capacity ammunition magazines devices banned in Colorado after previous mass shootings.
Alissa’s trial has been delayed because experts repeatedly found he was not able to understand legal proceedings and help his defense. But after Alissa improved after being forcibly medicated, Judge Ingrid Bakke ruled in October that he was mentally competent, allowing proceedings to resume.
Prosecutors will have the burden of proving he was sane, attempting to show Alissa knew what he was doing and intended to kill people in the store.
Authorities have not explained why Alissa bypassed a King Soopers near his home in the Denver suburb of Arvada and drove about 15 miles (24 kilometers) to the chain’s store in Boulder, a city he had never visited before the shooting, according to the defense.
Prosecutors have presented evidence that Alissa had researched things like how to move and shoot with an assault rifle and what kinds of bullets are the most deadly in the months before the shooting. One court document noted without elaboration that he searched for information about the “Christ Church attacks", an apparent reference to the livestreamed shooting attacks by a white nationalist on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people in March 2019.
Alissa immigrated from Syria with his family as a toddler. He lived with his family in Arvada, where they owned a restaurant.
The only known problem Alissa had before the shooting was an incident in high school in 2018 when he was convicted of assaulting a fellow student, according to police documents. A former classmate also told The Associated Press that Alissa was kicked off the wrestling team after yelling he would kill everyone following a loss in a practice match.
A sister-in-law who lived in Alissa’s home told police that he had been playing with what she thought was a “machine gun” two days before the shooting before two relatives took it away, according to court documents.
A number of Alissa’s relatives are listed as potential witnesses for the defense during the trial. Potential jurors will be questioned starting Tuesday, with opening statements expected before the end of the week.
Both sides will rely on experts to testify about his sanity, possibly including videos of their interviews with Alissa, said defense lawyer Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor and University of Denver law professor.
If jurors don’t believe Alissa was legally insane, they could also consider whether his mental illness prevented him from being able to act with deliberation and intent and find him guilty of second-degree murder instead, she said.
A sanity evaluation done by experts at the state mental hospital found Alissa was legally sane at the time of the attack, according to details provided by the defense in a court hearing this spring. According to the defense, the evaluators found the attack would not have happened but for Alissa’s untreated mental illness, which attorney Sam Dunn said was schizophrenia that included “auditory hallucinations.”
Olds said he is bracing himself to learn more horrific details about the shooting, including surveillance video not previously shown in public.
But he said finally having the trial behind him will help him and many of the families to finally grieve what they’ve lost, he said.
“There’s no such thing as moving on. It’s finding other ways to live without your loved one,” he said.
FILE - Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, accused of killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in March 2021, is led into a courtroom for a hearing, Sept. 7, 2021, in Boulder, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, Pool, File)
FILE - Pictures of the 10 victims of a mass shooting in a King Soopers grocery store are posted on a cement barrier outside the supermarket in Boulder, Colo., on April 23, 2021. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
FILE - Tributes cover the temporary fence around the King Soopers grocery store in which 10 people died in a mass shooting in late March on Friday, April 23, 2021, in Boulder, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
A tribute to Rikki Olds, who was fatally shot along with nine other people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., in 2021, is set up in her grandmother's home in Lafayette, Colo., Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)
A tribute to Rikki Olds, who was fatally shot along with nine other people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., in 2021, is set up in her grandmother's home in Lafayette, Colo., Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)
Robert Olds, uncle of Rikki Olds, who was fatally shot along with nine other people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., in 2021, looks through a memorial scrapbook in Lafayette, Colo., Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)
Robert Olds, uncle of Rikki Olds, who was fatally shot along with nine other people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., in 2021, is interviewed in Lafayette, Colo., Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)
