LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The man convicted of killing and dismembering his ex-girlfriend in Jeffersonville and eating parts of her body has appealed his life sentence.
Joseph Oberhansley was found guilty of murder and burglary in connection to the murder and dismemberment of Tammy Jo Blanton, 46, and sentenced to life without parole in 2020, more than six years after Blanton was found dead in her home on Locust Street on Sept. 11, 2014. He was found not guilty of rape.
The 49-page appeal, filed with the Indiana Court of Appeals on May 31, said the sentence of life without parole is not appropriate for Oberhansley because he suffers from a "profound mental health disorder and was detached from reality when the crime occurred."
Oberhansley's attorneys were set to use an insanity defense in the case until he told them not to. The prosecution agreed, and dropped the death penalty option if the defense didn't bring up mental health issues.
The appeal states that when he was 17, Oberhansley shot and killed his infant son's mother, shot and almost killed his own mother and shot himself in the head in a suicide attempt. The appeal also claims Oberhansley suffered permanent brain damage and that life without parole is an inappropriate sentence.
"It would be easy to look at the horrors visited upon Tammy and conclude they were simply the actions of a monster," Oberhansley's attorneys wrote in the appeal. "But doing so would be reductive, and this Court's review must look deeper. This Court must consider his actions in the context of his profound mental illness."
Attorneys said Oberhansley and Blanton began dating in the spring of 2014. Shortly after, Oberhansley moved into Blanton's home. In September 2014, Blanton broke up with Oberhansley in a text message after feeling "as if she had been repeatedly raped" by him, according to the appeal.
At the time of Blanton's death, police said they responded to her home on a welfare check and found her mutilated body covered in blood under a shower curtain in a bathtub, with more than 25 sharp force injuries and multiple blunt force injuries. Parts of her organs were found on a plate and a frying pan in the kitchen. Oberhansley was in the home when police arrived. Detectives said he had a bloody knife on him and confessed.
Oberhansley has maintained his innocence since his arrest. On the stand in his own defense, Oberhansley said Blanton had been killed by two men, who were still inside the home when he arrived. He said the men knocked him out, so he grabbed a knife when he woke up because he wasn't sure if they were still there.
Oberhansley's lawyers are asking for the case go back to a trial court to reduce his sentence to a specific number of years to be served.
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