Angela Nellany didn’t admit that she tried to kill her estranged husband with a can of wasps. Friday, she pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon.

The Riverbank woman was articulate and polite, saying “yes, ma’am” and “I do understand” as she waived her right to a trial in Stanislaus County Superior Court. Judge Nancy Ashley handed down a two-year sentence that likely will keep the middle-age mother of two behind bars for six more months.

The resolution is a far cry from the attempted murder and solicitation to murder charge the district attorney’s office filed after Nellany was arrested one year ago, when she was accused of leaving a soda can full of wasps in her husband’s truck and then hiring a hit man to finish the job.

Deputy District Attorney Shawn Barlow said a plea deal is a good compromise, because 12 jurors could have found Nellany guilty of attempted murder, sending her to prison for seven years to life, or they could have concluded that the case was little more than a family dispute gone awry.

“I think there were equal risks on both sides,” he said.

Defense attorney Martin Baker declined to comment.

Paul Nellany, who is divorcing his wife, according to court records, is deathly allergic to wasp stings. He declined to comment on the outcome, but hugged the prosecutor, then threw his hands in the air as he left the courthouse, announcing that the whole affair had been “crazy.”

The couple’s volatile relationship came to a head Super Bowl Sunday in 2007, when Anthony Hall of Empire came to the Nellany home on River Cove Drive to warn the husband that his estranged wife wanted him dead, according to several witnesses who testified during a preliminary hearing last spring.

The Nellanys had split up four months earlier, after 20 years of marriage, and they were fighting over the custody of two children.

Hall, then 18, told the court that Angela Nellany offered him $600 to kill Paul Nellany, adding that she wanted the deed done in a way that was slow and painful.

Paul Nellany told the court that he didn’t believe Hall until he recalled an incident in December 2006, when wasps flew out of a Welch’s grape soda can and filled the cab of his pickup.

A string of other witnesses said they had heard Angela Nellany make angry remarks about her cheating husband.

One of them, Mark Obitt of Riverbank, said he refused to help Angela Nellany retrieve a wasp nest she spotted in the roofline of his house, for fear that she might make good on her threats. Later, Obitt noticed that another wasp nest, which had been on his backyard fence, was gone.

The case had plenty of circumstantial evidence, but there were inconsistencies, too.

The prosecution’s key witness, Hall, said he egged on the distraught woman, who gave him a $300 down payment, because he wanted to grab a few quick bucks. But he could not get Angela Nellany to talk about the alleged murder-for-hire plot during a recorded telephone call placed from the Sheriff’s Department.

Hall faces charges for credit card theft and drug possession and has failed to show up for court in his case, making his cooperation in the wasp trial unlikely.

“He was a deep concern of mine,” Barlow said.

Nellany remains in Stanislaus County jail, held without bail. She will be sent to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation this spring, after the Probation Department calculates the amount of credit she should receive for the year she already has spent behind bars.