Robyn Lee Brown, 49, had suffered hepatitis C and was under the influence of ice at the time.

Brown pleaded guilty to a count of Criminal Code assault on June 28 this year and to using abusive language to a police officer.

Justice Robert Pearce said officers were entitled to go about their job without being subjected to such disgusting and demeaning acts.

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The court heard that Brown had been arrested and was subsequently escorted to the Launceston Magistrates Court.

"While the officer was escorting Ms Brown to the court she called the officer a c***, sl** and numerous other words," Crown Prosecutor Felicity Radin said in a hearing last week.

Ms Brown was refused bail when she appeared and was being escorted back to the Launceston Reception Prison.

"She looked directly at the [officer] and when she was 30 centimetres away spat," Ms Radin said.

"She felt saliva across her face and in her right eye."

Ms Radin said it was discovered from the Tasmania Health Service that Ms Brown previously suffered from hepatitis C.

She said the officer had two blood tests which were negative and would undergo a third at the end of the year. Brown had relevant prior convictions including assaulting police in 1997 and common assault.

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She said Brown had been sentenced to a backdated five months jail in July which were completed on August 6.

Defence counsel Mark Doyle said Brown had a delusion at the time of the offence that police officers endorsed pedophilia and that there was significant corruption in the police force about child abduction.

Justice Pearce said that while the risk of transmission was small Brown should have been more aware of the worry it would cause to the officer.

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He said Brown's post-traumatic stress disorder and major psychotic illness schizo-affective disorder were relevant to sentencing.

He said that heavy abuse of many illicit drugs was inextricably linked to psychosis. He said prison would be of little benefit to Brown.

He suspended four months of the sentence on the condition that she commits no imprisonable offences over the next 18 months and that she report to a community correction officer and undergo drug treatment and testing.

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