The aunt of a Sequatchie County, Tenn., woman who was charged last week in the stabbing death of her husband said her niece has serious mental disabilities and she believes the stabbing was an act of self-defense.
On Oct. 17, 44-year-old Jerri Lynn Sanders was charged with criminal homicide in the death of 61-year-old John Wayne Sanders. The husband suffered a single stab wound to the abdomen while the two were having an argument at a home they shared on Branch Road, north of Dunlap. Sanders was on probation from a previous conviction for stabbing her husband in May 2016 in an incident he survived.
But Jerri Sanders’ aunt, Lavonne Randall of Atlanta, said her niece doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand what happened because she still suffers from the effects of an illness that affected her mental abilities.
“She has a history of an aneurysm when she was young,” Randall said of her niece on Tuesday. “She has the mind of a 12-year-old child.”
Jerri Sanders had a relationship with her husband that was tumultuous and sometimes abusive, the aunt said Tuesday.