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Chueng Lee, 46, of Weston, pleaded no contest to recklessly causing great bodily harm to another human and reckless driving causing great bodily harm, felonies punishable by up to 16 years in prison, Shawano County Clerk of Courts Sue Krueger said.
Circuit Judge Thomas Grover set sentencing for Aug. 5.
Lee, a 15-year veteran of the Wausau Police Department, was accused of forcing Chao Lee, 40, into a vehicle and deliberately crashing it into a Shawano County bridge last September. The woman suffered a broken hip, a broken arm and a broken leg in the crash that wrecked a Toyota pickup, court records said.
His trial for attempted first-degree intentional homicide, false imprisonment and aggravated battery started last week. Those charges carried a maximum punishment of up to 80 years in prison.
The plea bargain calls for prosecutors to recommend five to eight years in prison and drop five separate felony charges filed in Marathon County, including kidnapping and second-degree sexual assault, Shawano County District Attorney Greg Parker said.
“If the judge wants to give him probation, he certainly could,” Parker said.
Lee has only a 1993 misdemeanor disorderly conduct conviction for a prior record, the prosecutor said.
The state had made the plea offer to Lee twice before the trial began, in part because his estranged wife supported it, Parker said.
“They are trying to reconcile,” the prosecutor said. “The family wanted to work things out.”
Still, the wife would have testified against Lee during the homicide trial, and Parker said there was no indication she was going to recant her story.
Prosecutors told the jury that the pressure of debt and divorce led Lee to act as he did and he would have collected insurance on his estranged wife had she died.
Lee told investigators the crash happened because he swerved to avoid a deer.
Chao Lee, who filed for divorce in March 2007, told investigators that she got into her husband’s truck because he threatened to kill her at her Weston home Sept. 18. She said she tried to fasten her seat belt several times, but Lee repeatedly removed it before crashing into the concrete bridge near Bowler.
Prosecutors told the jury that Lee had taken a new wife during a trip to Laos in April 2007.
The two felony convictions mean Lee won’t be able to carry a gun and his career as a police officer is over, Parker said.
