The attorney for a Muddy Creek Township man convicted last year of third- degree murder plans to ask for a new trial at a post-sentencing hearing this afternoon.

Attorney Marco Attisano said he plans to offer various arguments for why Jeremey Sickenberger, 25, deserves a new trial and why a decades-long sentence imposed by county Judge William Shaffer is excessive. Attisano said Sickenberger’s diagnosis on the autism spectrum wasn’t presented at trial, and represents mitigating evidence that should be presented to a jury.

Last September a jury convicted Sickenberger of third-degree murder in the shooting of Thomas “T.J” Stockman.

On April 17, 2014, Stockman was shot in the side of the chest in the living room of Sickenberger’s home on Robbie Way.

At trial Sickenberger’s defense argued that the two were good friends and the shooting was accidental and came during horseplay between the two men. Prosecutors argued that Sickenberger’s actions were calculated and that he sought to avoid responsibility for Stockman’s death following the shooting by misleading investigators and coaching witnesses.

In December Shaffer sentenced Sickenberger to 18 to 40 years in prison.