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.