MARION COUNTY — A 25-year-old rural Iuka man has been sentenced to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty this week in Marion County court to a reduced felony meth charge.
Austin Hawley was arrested in October and charged with Class X felony possession of between 100 and 400 grams of methamphetamine.
He had earlier submitted a referral to the Marion County Drug Court.
But on Tuesday Hawley instead entered into an agreement with the state in which he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of Class 2 felony possession of less than 15 grams of meth in exchange for the Class X charge being dismissed.
In addition to the three-year prison sentence, he will have to serve two years mandatory supervised release at the end of his prison term.
According to court records, Hawley was arrested in October after a sheriff’s deputy found multiple baggies of meth in his possession during in a traffic stop in Salem.