In June 2024, a woman in the United States was sentenced to life for murder. After serving 43 years in prison, she found out that she had been wrongly accused and was released in July. This woman, Sandra Hemme, muddleheadedly confessed to murder in 1980 due to mental problems. After years of hard work, the court released her on the grounds that "the exculpatory evidence provided was valid."


Her lawyers also presented evidence of the real killer, believing it to be a dead police officer.

As a result, Heim became the female victim who served the longest term of unjust imprisonment known to the United States. When she went in, she was 20 years old and a young girl. When she came out, she was 63 years old and gray-haired.

Half a lifetime of freedom, youth and family life seemed to have been "stolen", and all of this was inseparable from the irresponsibility of the police in handling the case in the past, because the police concealed important evidence at that time.


She has been "imprisoned" almost her whole life

The incident happened on November 12, 1980. The deceased's name was Patricia Jeschke, a library employee. She did not go to work that day. The library director felt something was not normal, so he called the deceased's mother.

The extremely anxious mother rushed to the deceased's house and found that the house was locked. After breaking in through the window, she saw the man lying dead on the ground, naked, with multiple injuries to his head, and a telephone cord wrapped around his neck.

According to the police's judgment, the deceased was violated and violently treated, but there were no "signs of forced entry" into the home.

With no clues, the police had no idea who the murderer was.

However, on December 5, Heim was suddenly arrested, along with a man with a criminal record.

(Heim was suspected because some time ago she hid in a nurse's house with a knife and refused to leave. She was taken away by force. The police suspected that she had committed another crime, and the man was confessed by Heim. They had met in the hospital.)

At the beginning, the story Heim and the police described went like this:

She met Joe and Pat on the road and hitchhiked together.

In this story, no murder occurred, and the police don't know who Joe and Pat are.

Then, in another version of Heim's story, the situation escalated:

She said she went to a house with the man, and not long after, the man came out covered in blood, saying that he had killed the man, and threatened Heim not to tell anyone.

In this story, Heim suddenly identifies the man as the murderer.

It stands to reason that with such testimony, the man can be convicted.

But in fact, after the police conducted a close investigation of the man, they found that he had evidence of alibi at the time of the crime, which was proved by three witnesses and one consumption record.

If the man is not the murderer, then Heim's testimony is false. Why would she lie? That must be to absolve oneself.

So, on December 19, without substantial evidence and only Heim's confession, the police formally charged Heim with murder and did not allow bail.


At first, Heim refused to plead guilty. But when defending, there are always loopholes, and almost every statement is different.

During the interrogation, her testimony was "confused". At one point she said she did not go to the deceased's house, at another she said she went to the deceased's house to take a bath but could not remember how she got there, and at another she said she and the deceased had a quarrel over drugs, but the deceased's father confirmed that the deceased had no habit of smoking drugs.

Regarding confession, it goes back and forth. One moment I confess my sin, and the next I have to exonerate myself.

The testimony was inconsistent and confusing, but the police didn't think much of it and pronounced Heim guilty on June 5, 1985. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 50 years.

(Concerning this sentencing, Heim was also very disappointed because when she was beaten to death and did not plead guilty, she was told that as long as she confessed, she would not need the death penalty. She did not expect that the result would be so serious.)


The dawn of justice did not truly arrive until June 14, 2024, when two key pieces of evidence were found to overturn the verdict:

First, this case ignored the fact that Heim suffered from severe mental illness. She attempted suicide when she was 13 years old and was later sent to a psychiatric sanatorium. The day before she was arrested, her condition improved and she had just been taken home by her parents to live in. She did not expect to be regarded as a murderer and continued to be "imprisoned".

This means that Heim's statement cannot be used as evidence of incrimination, but the police ignored it.

Second, the police handling the case at the time concealed key evidence, an investigation report that had no connection between Heim and the crime scene, and the fact that the deceased's finances were discovered in the hands of a guilty police officer.

The policeman was arrested for other illegal activities, but the deceased's bank card was found on his body. He tried to use the deceased's card to buy an expensive camera, and then the deceased's gold jewelry was also found in his home.

Therefore, the court finally concluded that the policeman was directly related to the murder, but because the policeman died in 2015, he was not tried.


at last

The most unacceptable thing about this case is that someone took advantage of Heim's extremely abnormal mental state. During the investigation, there was a suspicion of luring and coercing a confession. Otherwise, based on Heim's mental state, it would be impossible to "narrate the murder process" that never happened.

This was later confirmed by Heim, who said that someone had been hinting to her that the "telephone cord" was the tool used to strangle the deceased.

What's even more ironic is that thanks to Heim's confession, if she had not confessed and been sentenced to death, she would never have seen the truth come out.

But it's too late to say anything. I hope the person who made the mistake can be held accountable, issue a sincere apology, and give Heim enough compensation to make up for it all.

According to federal regulations, the minimum standard for compensation for people who have been wrongfully imprisoned is US$50,000 per year, and the amounts vary greatly in different cases in different regions.

I saw a piece of news before. In 2021, a pair of brothers in North Carolina were unjustly imprisoned for 31 years. The total compensation for the two was US$75 million.

It includes a personal freedom compensation of US$31 million for one person, which is a compensation of US$1 million for one year in prison, and an additional mental compensation of US$13 million.

And Heim's unjust imprisonment lasted 43 years, which is much longer than the 31 years of the two brothers. It is unknown how much compensation he will receive.