A Casper man charged with biting off another man's ear during a bar fight hung his head as a jury convicted him Wednesday of aggravated assault.

Jason Phillip, 34, faces up to 10 years in prison for the July assault, which left the other man disfigured. After giving some belongings to his attorney, Phillip was taken into custody pending sentencing.

A jury of six men and six women took about three hours to arrive at the guilty verdict following a three-day trial in Natrona County District Court. With their verdict, jurors agreed with prosecutors that Phillip committed an assault, rather than acted in self defense as his attorney maintained.

"At the end of the day, when you sever someone's body part, the jury said that wasn't self defense," said Assistant District Attorney Dan Itzen, the main prosecutor for the trial.

The victim in the case, Benjamin Ledford, did not appear in the courtroom for the verdict. He moved to Florida after the incident.

Phillip does not dispute he bit off part of Ledford's left ear during a fight at Galloway's bar in Casper sometime before 2 a.m. on July 18. The trial focused on whether his actions during the fight were reasonable given the situation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just another fight," Itzen told jurors during his closing statement. "Far from it."

Assistant Public Defender Nichole Collier, who represented Phillip, maintained Ledford was the aggressor that morning.

"There is no dispute that if Mr. Ledford hadn't punched him that day, he'd have two intact ears today," she said.

Ledford and Phillip both testified during the trial and offered conflicting versions of the events that morning. Both said they had been arguing before the fight, but each painted the other as the instigator.

On the stand, Ledford admitted to throwing the first punch, which struck Phillip in the head. But Ledford said the other man had been moving aggressively toward them. Phillip claimed he was cold cocked.

The men ended up grappling on the bar floor. Ledford said Phillip put him in a head lock before biting off about a third of his left ear. Doctors were unable to reattach it.

Phillip maintained he only bit Ledford to end the fight and wasn't trying to remove the ear. He said Ledford and other bar patrons hit and struck him while he was on the ground.

Itzen, however, questioned why Phillip didn't call the police afterward if he had been the victim of a violent attack.

He also noted that a doctor who testified during the trial determined that, given the injuries, Phillip must have been behind or to the side of Ledford when he bit him.

Reach crime reporter Joshua Wolfson at (307) 266-0582 or at josh.wolfson@trib.com.