A Birnamwood man recently sentenced in Shawano County on 54 counts of child porn possession will face a jury trial on similar charges in Portage County.
A Portage County judge last week rejected a no-contest plea from Christopher J. Ehlenfeldt, 39, after Ehlenfeldt continued maintaining his innocence even as he was entering his plea.
Ehlenfeldt faces 29 felony counts of child porn possession in Portage County, and one felony count of capturing an image of nudity.
He reached a plea agreement with the state, but at his Dec. 18 hearing Ehlenfeldt told the court he was pleading no contest in spite of being innocent of the charges.
Ehlenfeldt said he believed he had no choice but to plead to the charges and that a jury trial would do no good.
Judge Thomas Flugaur refused to accept the plea in light of those comments and set the matter for a jury trial starting April 18.
The defendant’s attorney subsequently filed a motion withdrawing from the case.
Ehlenfeldt made similar comments during his plea hearing and Dec. 11 sentencing hearing in Shawano-Menominee County Circuit Court.
Ehlenfeldt maintained he was innocent during a long and rambling statement to the court at the sentencing hearing, and said he accepted a plea deal on the advice of his attorney only because he believed the District Attorney’s Office would continue to target him and his family.
District Attorney Greg Parker said there was no truth to Ehlenfeldt’s claims.
Ehlenfeldt maintained the child porn files found on his computer had been downloaded by his ex-wife’s boyfriend.
“My house has been broken into many times,” he said.
He also berated his own defense counsel, seated beside him in the courtroom, saying his attorney had “dropped the ball horribly” and failed to introduce evidence that the defendant maintained would have proved his innocence.
Judge James Habeck accepted Ehlenfeldt’s no-contest plea in spite of those comments. Habeck then sentenced him to 15 years in prison and another 10 years of extended supervision.
Ehlenfeldt had initially been charged in Shawano County with 69 counts of possessing child porn and one felony count of child sexual exploitation, until pleading no contest to 54 of the counts in July.
Shawano County Sheriff’s Detective Chris Gamm testified that more than 3,000 videos were found on Ehlenfeldt’s computer, 90 percent of which were child pornography.
Gamm said some of the content was different than in other child porn cases because it involved very small children, under the age of 3, being abused by a woman. The videos also included a slide-show tutorial instructing viewers how to groom a young child for sexual assault.
In the Portage County case, Ehlenfeldt was arrested after his wife turned a computer over to Stevens Point police on which a detective found “several thousand images of suspected child pornography,” according to a criminal complaint.
Ehlenfeldt could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for each child pornography charge.
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