MONROE — During a tearful, three-hour hearing June 25 in Green County Circuit Court, a Blue Mounds man was sentenced to six months in jail for a brutal beating of his wife, even after she objected and told the judge they have rebuilt a solid marriage.

Timothy M. McNamer, 43, pleaded guilty in November to felony charges of strangulation and suffocation, substantial battery and false imprisonment and misdemeanor charges of criminal damage to property, battery, intimidation of a victim to dissuade reporting and disorderly conduct with use of a dangerous weapon.

The most serious charges in the case, kidnapping and attempted second-degree sexual assault, were dismissed as part of a plea deal.

Judge Duane Jorgenson sentenced McNamer to six months in jail with Huber work release privileges and five years on probation, with conditions including no drinking. Jorgenson gave the probation agent the discretion to impose an additional 12 months of jail time.

“Short of putting someone in the hospital, this may be one of the worst cases of domestic violence that this court has seen in the last five years. It’s very disturbing,” Jorgenson said. The sentencing hearing was held via video conference and streamed to YouTube.

As Jorgenson gave the sentence, McNamer rocked back and forth crying and his wife appeared to be sobbing so hard she was hyperventilating.

Earlier during the sentencing she told the judge, “If you put Tim in jail, much less prison, you will take things from me, the victim, when I need them the most. I beg you, please, let us continue healing, our marriage, our life.”

She thanked Jorgenson for treating the couple “not as stereotypes but as two imperfect people trying to work on our marriage.”

McNamer was initially held on a $40,000 cash bond and ordered to have no contact with his wife. But Jorgenson later approved bond modifications that allowed the couple to live together and work on their marriage while the case was pending.

“For nearly a year, we’ve been having an unsupervised, normal married life. During that time Tim and I have developed a very open line of communication... We have each learned to recognize (our) emotional triggers ... We sit, we talk about those feelings. It has become so much of a habit now that we high-five ourselves when we have a healthy conversation. It has made for a solid marriage,” she said.

Her husband, she said, “has already changed.”

She and her husband’s attorney also brought up logistical concerns, namely that the couple would lose their home, their animals and their business if McNamer was incarcerated. They also referenced the wife’s failing health as a concern, saying that McNamer needed to be around to care for her.

Assistant District Attorney Laura Kohl was having none of it.

“He says now that she will lose everything if he goes to prison ... (that’s) part of the control over her,” Kohl said.

In blistering arguments that lasted at least an hour, Kohl went through the case count by count and blow by blow, describing the violence the wife endured Oct. 31, 2018 at a Marks Lane home in rural Blanchardville.

After finding out about her relationship with another man, McNamer flew into a rage, choked his wife several times until she blacked out, punched her face, tied her up, put duct tape over her mouth, ripped off her clothes and threatened to rape her and kill her animals while crying in anger as he waved a 9mm handgun.

He later burned her clothing and family pictures, scratched the word “whore” on her horse trailer and poured water in the urn of her deceased dog, Kohl said.

“Everything that he did was exercising control over her and the situation,” Kohl said. “He decided to let his wife hobble away, dizzy (and alone) to go get medical help.”

Kohl then played a video from the initial police visit to McNamer’s home. McNamer said he and his wife had a “scuffle” and that she got mad at him and “slipped on a step,” adding that “it was a fight between couples and nothing dangerous happened.” The deputies observed blood everywhere on the floor.

Kohl noted how “calm and clear” McNamer was as he lied about what happened. He was not “this out-of-control drunk person as he’ll have you believe now,” but someone with a history of controlling behavior and of domestic abuse in a previous relationship, she said.

The wife told investigators it was the first time McNamer had been violent with her. Except for a misdemeanor theft conviction from nearly two decades ago, he has no criminal record.

Kohl asked for five years in prison and an additional five years on extended supervision.

To this, McNamer’s wife rolled her eyes and shook her head. Earlier she had accused Kohl of “view(ing) me as the same nameless victim as every other case.”

Kohl acknowledged the wife’s position and said it was a “completely understandable reaction” and that she had watched her “struggle.”

But, “I have to do justice. I’m seeking justice for the community.”

McNamer’s defense attorney, Nicholas Ganser, asked for a sentence of three years on probation. He accused Kohl of overcharging McNamer, being retaliatory toward the victim and failing to consider the uniqueness of the case.

“She thinks she paternalistically knows better than everyone else,” Ganser said.

McNamer, Ganser said, has seen four counselors and taken his rehabilitation seriously. Sending him to prison would simply be “warehousing a human being.”

Despite a trauma-filled childhood and not finishing high school, McNamer has been “a good law-abiding man but for that day” and has “worked to redeem himself from those bad acts.”

When given the opportunity to speak, McNamer first thanked the judge “for giving me a second chance at life and marriage.” He said he read and re-read the police reports from the case and “couldn’t believe what was done by my hand.”

“I’m so sorry for the pain,” he said. He said he sought help to understand how he got to the point of beating and choking his wife, and through therapy, “we are the healthiest either one of us have ever been individually as well as together.”

His wife made a heart shape with her hands as she listened.

McNamer said in “these troubling times in the world, the world needs people like me in it being a productive member of society.” For his wife, he wanted to be “a man she deserves to have by her side.”

Jorgenson called the abuse in the case egregious. He also noted a “codependence” between McNamer and his wife. It concerned him that McNamer seemed to be treating the case as “a communication issue or a marital issue.”

“No, this is a crime, and we need to treat it as a crime,” Jorgenson said. “There are ways of dealing with infidelity. This was not.”

Jorgenson said he struggled with how to sentence the case, “mostly because of what I don’t know” about the future.

“I don’t know if he’s truly changed, if he’s truly taken this in... We do know that perpetrators are really good at hiding what goes on behind closed doors,” Jorgenson said.

Still, McNamer has “certainly done a lot.” Jorgenson’s final words to the couple were, “I wish you nothing but the best.”