Maple Grove man convicted of murdering wife in 2020 sentenced to 30 years in prison
A Maple Grove Police Department squad car is at the scene where officers are investigating the "suspicious" death of a 40-year-old woman on March 10, 2020.[Tim Zelenak/KSTP]
A judge sentenced a Maple Grove man to 30 years in prison Monday after a jury found him guilty of murdering his wife.
A criminal complaint states that Maple Grove police responded to the home of 55-year-old John Wiseman the afternoon of March 10, 2020, and found his wife, 40-year-old Yang Liu, on the ground with several gunshot wounds.
Wiseman told police he had left to pick his son up from school about an hour earlier, a Ring doorbell video showed this was true, the complaint states. However, surveillance video at the school showed it took him about 40 minutes to get to the school, which was only a 12-minute drive from his house.
Investigators later found gunshot residue on a rag on Wiseman’s shirt sleeves and a rag in his car.
Witnesses also told police that Wiseman and his wife had a volatile relationship and that Wiseman said he wanted a divorce but didn’t want to split their assets 50/50 because he had "earned this."
Wiseman was charged with second-degree murder on March 13, 2020, and a jury found him guilty on that charge on Oct. 15 following a four-week trial and two days of deliberation.
Hennepin County District Judge Nicole A. Englisch on Monday ordered Wiseman to serve his 30-year sentence at Minnesota Correctional Facility-St. Cloud. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder is 40 years.