A Butler man was resentenced Tuesday in Butler County Common Pleas Court to serve 108 to 216 months in state prison after an appellate court recently vacated part of the 117- to 234-month sentence he was given in 2019 after a jury found him guilty of possessing and dealing heroin and crack cocaine.
Michael L. Jackson, 29, was resentenced on seven of the 12 charges he was convicted of in June 2019. The jury found him not guilty of one charge.
Agents from the state Attorney General’s Office arrested Jackson in a raid after making a controlled drug buy at his home in the 200 block of South Sixth Avenue in June 2018. Officers seized two knotted plastic bags of suspected raw heroin, 27 stamp bags of heroin and 20 bags of crack, in addition to 4,900 empty stamp bags and other drug packaging materials.
Judge Timothy F. McCune, who presided over the trial, handed down the new sentence in a hearing that Jackson attended via video conference from the state prison in Albion in Erie County, where he is serving his sentence.
Jackson and his attorney, Benjamin Breene Levine, asked for leniency.Jackson said he has used his time in prison to obtain an education and treatment for his drug addiction, and reflect on the pain he inflicted on others due to his addiction.He said he was raised by his hard-working parents in a drug-infested area of Philadelphia, but got involved in drugs to make money “the easy way” to buy nice clothes and other things.If he were released from incarceration, he said he had a job at a nursing home owned by his aunt in Philadelphia and that he would live with his mother.Levine asked McCune to impose concurrent sentences of 21 to 42 months in prison on two felony charges of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver for which he originally was sentenced to serve a combined 30 to 60 months, and to reimpose the rest of the original sentence.Laura Pitchford, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, said state Superior Court vacated part of the sentence and affirmed part of the sentence.She said Jackson was found guilty by a jury, and asked McCune to maintain the 30- to 60-month sentence for the two possession with intent to deliver charges.She asked McCune to maintain the original total sentence of 117 to 234 months in prison followed by 24 months probation.In addition to the two counts of possession with intent to deliver, Jackson was found guilty of three felony counts of conspiracy to commit possession with intent to deliver, felony charges of criminal use of a communication facility and conspiracy to commit criminal use of a communication facility, and misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to commit possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, conspiracy to commit possession of drug paraphernalia and two counts of possession of a controlled substance.The jury found him not guilty of one felony count of possession with intent to deliver.
In September this year, the Superior Court vacated the 60- to 120-month prison sentence Jackson was given for one of the felony charges of conspiracy to commit possession with intent to deliver and the 12-month probation sentence for the felony charge of conspiracy to commit criminal use of a communication facility.The sentence McCune ordered included giving Jackson credit for 379 days served in the Butler County prison and the time he has served in state prison.A codefendant in the case, Noah Storm Burnside, 24, of Butler, was sentenced to serve 12 to 24 months in prison after he pleaded guilty in January 2019 to felony charges of possession with intent to deliver and conspiracy to commit possession with intent to deliver.