The charges should be reduced to manslaughter because sexual intercourse occurred before a fight broke out and the man's partner ended up dead, according to the 48-year-old suspect's lawyer.
"My client is psychologically healthy," the lawyer said of his client.
The man is charged with stabbing his partner twice in the chest and then desecrating her dead body after she refused sex in July 2007.
The suspect had already been convicted of the murder and attempted rape of another partner in Kiel in 1987. Whether he had committed necrophilia could not be determined during the trial, and he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The court handed him a lighter jail term because it determined he had been drunk and not aware of what he was doing at the time. He was released in 1995 after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
The trial in Nuremberg trial will be decided on August 5. The man faces a life-sentence for the alleged crime.