A jury in Lucas County Common Pleas Court deliberated less than 90 minutes Wednesday before finding a Toledo man charged with beating his wife with a hammer guilty of felonious assault.

Michael Herrell, 32, of the 400 block of Bancroft Street, faces up to eight years in prison when he is sentenced at 11 a.m. today by Judge James Bates.

While Herrell’s DNA was found on a bloodied hammer at their apartment, the victim, Lisa Herrell, struggled to say who had attacked her while she was sleeping March 12. She said she “had a feeling” it was her husband but told the jury she “couldn’t tell who it was.”

“Did you want to believe it was Michael?” Rebecca Facey, an assistant county prosecutor, asked her.

“No,” she replied.

“Why not?” Ms. Facey asked.

“Because I love him and I thought he loved me,” she said.

Mrs. Herrell, 34, was found in her bedroom in a pool of blood by her 15-year-old daughter.

Her daughter said this to a 911 operator in a recording played for the jury: “Her husband’s gone and I think he did it to her.”

After the verdict was read, defense attorney Jack Viren said he planned to discuss a possible appeal with his client.

But he acknowledged the evidence “was pretty significant.”

Ms. Facey said the case was “one of the most severe cases of domestic violence short of domestic violence homicides. It was brutal. He absolutely brutalized her, and her life will never be the same.”

Mrs. Herrell, who suffered severe head trauma and broken bones, was in a coma for two days, hospitalized for 10 days, and spent more than a month in rehabilitation.

In her testimony, the victim said on the witness stand that her memory had been affected by the assault, that she recalled having an argument with Herrell that night but did not recall what it was about.

Mrs. Herrell told the jury she had previously threatened to leave her husband.

He told her he wouldn’t let her leave, and that he would kill her if she tried, she said.

Ms. Facey said afterward the case bore many of the classic signs of domestic abuse.

“I think her still loving him is the complication of domestic violence both socially and criminally in trying to prosecute these cases,” she said. “They’re not strangers. This isn’t an intruder in the night.”

Contact Jennifer Feehan at: jfeehan@theblade.com or 419-213-2134.

First Published July 7, 2016, 4:00 a.m.