A WOMAN who beat her husband with a table leg and also threw a knife and a glass at him has been spared an immediate jail sentence after he pleaded with a judge to keep her out of jail.

In an unusual move, Karen Harris’s husband Richard was called into the witness box by Judge Michael Taylor and asked how he would feel if the defendant was locked up.

The judge said: “She keeps having a go at you. Do you want her back?”

Mr Harris, who suffers from epilepsy and is cared for by his wife, said he did and also said he would be “upset” if she was jailed by the judge.

Prosecutor Sue Jacobs had outlined how the warring couple, of Percy Street, Middlesbrough, had fallen out in an argument over a laptop computer.

Karen Harris went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, throwing it at her husband, and also threw a glass at him. Both missed and hit a door.

Mrs Jacobs described how the defendant then picked up a coffee table and tried to hit the victim with it.

“He put his foot on it, resulting it one of the legs breaking off the table. She then picked up the leg and hit him on the head with it three or four times,” said the prosecutor.

“He suffered a cut to his forehead above his left eye.”

The victim was taken to Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital for treatment and Karen Harris was arrested after the incident on July 15 this year.

She told police she had a problem with her temper, adding: “Yeah I hit him. He does not hit me.”

Teesside Crown Court heard how the 49-year-old, who admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm, had a number of previous convictions for assault, three of which involved attacks on her husband of seven years.

Judge Taylor said she had a low intolerance threshold and had a tendency to “snap”. He also said a probation report described her as a “high risk” of attacking her husband again.

He told her: “You could not complain with your record if I sent you back inside for 18 months.

“However he [your husband] does not want to me to lock you up. He wants you back. I think he is a brave man.”

The judge gave Karen Harris a six month jail sentence, suspended for 12 months, and said she would do 100 hours unpaid work.

Judge Taylor added: “If you commit any further offence punishable by imprisonment you will brought back here and I will lock you up.”