Human Rights Glance
A Missouri woman who was imprisoned for more than 40 years for murder has had her conviction overturned after a judge found “clear and convincing” evidence that she was innocent of the killing in question.
Sandra “Sandy” Hemme, 63, was convicted of – and sentenced to life imprisonment for – the 1980 slaying of Patricia Jeschke, a library worker in St Joseph, Missouri, after Hemme made statements to the police incriminating herself while she was a psychiatric patient.
On Friday, Livingston county circuit judge Ryan Horsman ruled that “evidence directly” ties the killing of Jeschke to a local police officer who later went to prison for another crime and has since died.
Hemme, who has spent the last 43 years behind bars, must be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors decide to re-try her, the judge said. The ruling came after an evidentiary hearing in January where Hemme’s legal team presented arguments supporting her evidence.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit of the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dampening the hope of advocates for racial justice that the government would make amends for one of the 
When the Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah arrived at a Manhattan cafe on Thursday afternoon, he had just learned that his article had been reinstated in the Columbia Law Review. After a weeklong censorship controversy, the prestigious journal’s website was back online, too.
