For a system meant to deliver justice, many find themselves in the hands of failure from the very courts they hoped would promise them freedom. As time goes on, more are deemed guilty and put in pris
on for false reasons. It has become evident that courts do not care about the victims, but instead putting whoever they can behind bars which leads to the wrong people spending the majority, if not all, of their life still not free from the shackles of the court. There are three cases that stick out to me, these cases being Sandra Hemme, the Menendez brothers, and Gypsy Rose, all as cases where they were failed by the very same system that was supposed to deliver them justice.
Sandra Hemme was only age 21 when sentenced to life in prison for a murder she did not commit. Hemme was deemed guilty of stabbing Patricia Jeschke to death in St Joseph, Missouri. At the time, as said by the Innocence Staff, “Hemme, then 20, was a patient at St. Joseph’s State Hospital receiving treatment for auditory treatment for auditory hallucinations, derealization, and drug misuse.” The police were quick to accuse Hemme and spent countless hours interviewing her while she remained at the hospital. After a while, Hemme, under the intense persuasion of medication, confessed to the crime. There were no witnesses to the crime, nor was there any evidence that specifically pointed to Hemme as the murderer except for her false confession given at the time, the Associated Press stated, “Sandra Hemme was freed in July while the decision to overturn her conviction was reviewed.” Hemme, now age 64, went back to trial once more considering new information found on the case. Hemme was found not guilty of the crime and was able to walk free only a month later. The court found that it was allowable for the confession recorded under the time Hemme was severely induced to count as evidence against her, whose ineffective attempt to put the actual killer behind bars ended up with an innocent woman wasting her life in jail while the true murderer walked free.
Erik and Lyle Menendez were born to a monster father and a thoughtless mother. The two brothers, born in New York City, spent their life from the time Lyle was 8 years old being assaulted, both physically and mentally by their father, Jose Menendez. Once Erik was 18 and Lyle 21, the brothers, as stated in an article by the NBC staff, “admitted they fatally shot their entertainment executive father, Jose Menendez, and their mother, Kitty Menendez.” Erik confessed to his therapist, Dr. Oziel, that he and Lyle had murdered their parents, who then spent five months listening to the brother’s story before Dr. Oziel’s mistress overheard and turned the brothers into the authorities. Once at trial, Erik and Lyle explained the abuse of their father and their mother who did nothing to protect them. Unfortunately, since there was no definite evidence that they had been abused other than their word, the two went to court for six months, going through three separate trials before the court finally reached a guilty verdict. Erik and Lyle were, as said in an article by Cindy VonQuendnow and Dalia Faheid, the brothers were “sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.” Erik and Lyle now remain in prison and say their life has never been better, despite the circumstances. The multiple trials the brothers had seen all failed to recognize the true story behind the murder, taking away the free life the two could have lived without the pressure of wondering what their father would do next.
Gypsy Rose was finally released from prison December 28th, 2023, after eight years. Gypsy’s mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, had forced Gypsy to undergo all sorts of medication, treatments, and surgery’s, Sandra Kettler wrote, “When Gypsy was eight years old, Dee Dee described her as suffering from leukemia and muscular dystrophy and said she required a wheelchair and feeding tube.” It would come out once in trial that Gypsy did not need all these things and was in fact a normal healthy human. Having no free will her mother did unspeakable things such as lie about her age to everyone, including Gypsy, and had all Gypsy’s teeth pulled out because they began rotting away due to all the unnecessary medication she was put under. Gypsy managed to communicate with people outside over online chat rooms where she met Nicholas Godejohn. She told him the truth about her mother, where Nicholas and Gypsy had planned to murder her. Nicholas committed the crime while Gypsy was simply an accomplice. The two had been found by police and taken into custody after trying to escape to his home in Wisconsin. Once in trial, as written by Kelsie Gibson, “Gypsy was sentenced to ten years in prison after she pleaded guilty to murder for the role in the killing of her mother.” Nicholas was sentenced to life. The court had failed Gypsy in which there was countless evidence against her mother, in which the only way out of the abuse was to murder her mother and attempt to live a normal life.
To conclude, the trials in court tend to fail victims of abuse, medical and physical, in believing their stories. These are only three cases in which the victim was turned into the villain by the court because their mental health had been so messed up and their lives had been altered forever. They now waste years of their life behind the cold bars of a prison cell, all of which could have been avoided if the courts were able to find the truth from the beginning and give them the free lives they deserved to live.
