Friend bit the ear that listened to him

’Ear ye, ’ear ye.

Ever have one of those foggy morning-afters when it feels like jackhammers are pulverizing your brain cells?

Stephen Lawrence woke up like that on a day back in November 2015.

Couldn’t remember much of anything from a four-sheets-to-the-wind drinking session with a booze buddy the previous evening.

Sent a text to his pal saying, heck, didn’t know how he’d got home but hoping he hadn’t been “a super a--hole last night.” He had. The friend — likely no longer — responded rather tetchily that Lawrence had bitten off his ear, which he might now lose altogether. Gives a whole new, and literal, meaning to chewing someone’s ear off.

The severed auricle had been deposited into a Ziploc bag and reattached at the hospital. Lawrence: “Oh, f--k me.” Indeed. But cock an ear and let the Ontario Court of Appeal deci- sion released last week tell the tale — written by a trio of judges who clearly were snickering up their robe sleeves.

“The appellant and the complainant were drinking together in the evening at the complainant’s house. No one else was home. The appellant was severely intoxicated but the complainant was not. The complainant had to work the next day and drank moderately.”

The appellant — that would be Lawrence — became “boisterous” and the complainant — unidentified in the document, but let’s call him “Van Gogh” — urged him to “simmer down.”

Turned a deaf ear, did Lawrence.

After Van Gogh emerged from the bathroom, “the appellant knocked him to the ground and bit off a large portion of his ear.”

Van Gogh felt a sharp pain and blood spewing down his neck. He grabbed paper towels to stanch the wound.

“The appellant spat the complainant’s ear out onto the bar.”

Lawrence was ordered to leave while the victim called 911.

Despite suturing by doctors, sewing the appendage back on proved a bust.

“Unfortunately for the complainant, weeks later the reattached ear fell off.”

Lawrence, contrite, told police he couldn’t recall the incident at all. But since there was nobody else present, he’d “obviously” been the biter and wasn’t denying it. He was charged with aggravated assault.

At a one-day trial last year, Lawrence’s lawyer argued that his client was an alcoholic with no memory of what had happened — in one ear and out the other — or what had led to the scuffle.

But the Crown, the defence maintained, had not proven foresight to commit bodily harm and, further, there was the possibility that Lawrence had acted in self-defence.

That fell on deaf ears with Ontario Court Justice Diane Lahaie, who wasn’t having any of it. She found the complainant credible and reliable, ac- cepted his testimony that he’d imbibed moderately and had a clear recollection of the ear chomp.

“I find that the accused ‘lost it’ when he was told to simmer down by the complainant as he went to the washroom. When the complainant returned, the accused threw him to the floor, jumped on top of him and bit his ear off, spitting it out onto the bar.”

Lawrence’s appeal lawyer, Ian Carter, reached by the Star at his cottage over the weekend, explained his two-track submission. Both men, he posited, were drunk, and neither provided a reliable account of what had occurred; also, he suggested, the trial judge had impermissibly speculated about the cause of the injury. Carter: “They didn’t buy it.” Van Gogh, at trial, never claimed to have a specific memory of his chum Mike Tyson-ing his ear.

From the cross-examination: “He had — before I knew it, he had, my ear was bitten off and I — I felt to the side of my head and I could feel the blood, so there was a roll of paper towels on a bookshelf directly in front, which I put on the ear, ’cause the blood was running down my face and then I — I started yelling at him to get out of the house.”

Question: “And do you remember at what point you realized that it was your ear?”

“Well, when I felt the blood running down the side of my face, I had a sharp pain.”

The appeal judges disagreed that the trial judge had speculated about the exact cause of the cause of the ear trauma, in the absence of expert evidence.

“We are unable to accept this submission,” they wrote. “The trial judge did not speculate. Rather, she accepted the complainant’s uncontradicted testimony that the appellant had bitten off his ear. Although the complainant’s appearance in court and the photographs could not independently establish a human bite, they were consistent with the complainant’s testimony.”

The appeal was dismissed and Lawrence, who’d been on bail, was sent off to jail to serve his nine-month sentence.

Yes, this is an alley-oop holiday Monday column.

No like? Blow it out your…

Van Gogh felt a sharp pain and blood spewing down his neck. He grabbed paper towels to stanch the wound