Starks receives three-year sentence on meth-related charge

By Gary Scott on October 19, 2016 at 2:33pm

A Brighton man will spend the next three years behind bars after his sentencing in Morgan County court yesterday.

Forty-six-year-old Juan Starks was indicted by a grand jury in July for unlawful possession of methamphetamine manufacturing material. According to Morgan County State’s Attorney Gray Noll, Starks had originally plead not guilty.

However, Starks decided to withdraw his plea of not guilty and subsequently pleaded guilty. And on Tuesday, Starks received a sentence of three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections with two years of mandatory supervised release.

Noll cited Starks’ criminal history as a major factor leading to the lengthy sentence.

“Because of his criminal history, obviously, we wanted him to go to prison as opposed to probation. Probation is kind of the assumed punishment per the stature, except for when you have a criminal history of this kind, and so he went to the Department of Corrections mainly based on his criminal history,” says Noll.

In 2010, Starks was arrested on two separate occasions, once for possession of drug paraphernalia and resisting a peace officer, the other for obstructing identification, for which he served 90 days in jail.

As for the three-year sentence, Noll says “Given the facts of this case and his criminal history, I think three years was an appropriate sentence for Mr. Starks.”

In addition to the sentence, Starks was fined more than 15-hundred dollars and was given credit for 89 days in jail.