Guilty: Ear-biter James Green convicted of savage, cocaine-fuelled assault in Newbury

A MAN who bit his partner’s ear off while high on cocaine has been convicted of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

It can now be revealed that James Green sacked two defence barristers assigned to represent him, and decided to conduct his own case.

Giving evidence from the witness box, he tried to persuade jurors he thought he was being attacked by a “shadow person”.

The 36-year-old admitted the ear-biting attack when arrested but initially claimed he did it in his sleep, Reading Crown Court has heard.

However Green, who was living at Maple Crescent in Newbury, repeatedly changed his story, eventually settling on a version where he was having hallucinations due to an epileptic fit.

A jury at Reading Crown Court did not believe him and convicted him of wounding Louise Campbell on September 13 last year.

He also has numerous previous convictions – in 2020 the former pupil of Trinity School in Shaw, who used to live in Hungerford and also in Thatcham, was jailed for launching a vicious, unprovoked attack on Ms Campbell, knocking her unconscious.

He also has a conviction for assaulting her by beating her.

In 2015 he was jailed for five years after police carrying out a routine stop found a stun gun disguised as a torch in his car.

Green also has convictions for other offences including repeatedly flouting court orders.

Jurors at his latest trial at Reading Crown Court heard Green attacked Ms Campbell following a day-long alcohol and cocaine binge when she tried to look at his mobile phone.

Surgeons tried to re-attach the severed ear part but the flesh blackened and died.

Prosecutor Althea Brooks said: “In interview, the defendant said he had been asleep, or perhaps unconscious, at the time of the attack; that he didn’t know what he was doing and thought he was being attacked.

“The Crown doesn’t accept this.”

Giving evidence, Green said that, seconds before the biting incident he had gone into an “unconscious state” and had “seen an image of a shadow person… coming towards me in slow motion – a bit blurry, a grey and black shadow person”.

He added: “Me being me, if I’m confronted with fear, rather than run from it, I get stuck in… I grabbed it from behind the head.

“I’ve felt this change in pressure around my face, as you would if you were to clamp down on something.

“But at the time, do I know what’s happened?

“I don’t.

“I’m not even in the living room, like.”

Green said he now believes he was having an epileptic seizure complete with visual and auditory hallucinations and thus was not responsible for his unconscious actions.

He went on: “Then my PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) came on… I’m just going into panic.

“I grabbed the car keys and left.”

Ms Brooks, cross examining Green, pointed out that he had told police: “If I think I’m being attacked, I’m allowed to f****** defend myself and I don’t give a s*** what means I use.”

Green replied: “There was a hallucination going on in my brain.”

Ms Brooks suggested he had changed his story “quite a bit” over the past year and pointed out Ms Campbell had told jurors he had been wide awake at the time of the incident.

She suggested cocaine had made him aggressive but Mr Green said that, on the contrary, the drug made him “timid”.

He also said that, despite having consumed spirits and beer all day and into the night, he had “not been drunk at all” when he drove to his mother’s home in Bucklebury.

On Friday, September 15, Green was found guilty.

He is due to be sentenced in October.

Judge Kirsty Real meanwhile remanded Green in custody.