AUGUSTA — An Augusta man arrested after police found crack cocaine and fentanyl while searching his apartment was sentenced Thursday to two-and-a-half years in prison.
William Stephenson, 33, pleaded guilty to two Class B felony counts of trafficking in schedule W drugs, cocaine base, or crack, in one count and fentanyl in the other.
He was sentenced in a plea agreement reached between his attorney Matthew Bowe and state Attorney General’s Office prosecutors to 30 months in prison.
Augusta Police, according to assistant attorney general Katie Sibley, conducted three controlled buys of drugs at Stephenson’s 33 Stone St. apartment while he was present in September of 2020.
Police obtained a search warrant and on Sept. 14, 2020, with assistance from Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office, Maine State Police, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, found approximately 210 grams of crack cocaine and 48 grams of fentanyl, according to a news release from Augusta Police.
Sibley said those amounts “were significant enough to be considered trafficking, not for personal use.”
Police found Stephenson across the street as the search took place, and arrested him.
Stephenson was indicted in December 2020, on two counts of aggravated trafficking in schedule W drugs, cocaine base in one count and fentanyl powder in the other, two counts of unlawful trafficking in schedule W drugs, cocaine base in one fentanyl in the other, and one count of unlawful possession of schedule W drugs, fentanyl powder.
In the plea agreement, however, the state dismissed all but the two counts of unlawful trafficking in schedule W drugs, to which Stephenson pleaded guilty by video from jail Thursday to Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy who was at the Capital Judicial Center. The Class B crime is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
A co-defendant in the case, Paul Greene, 21, of New York City, was indicted on two counts of aggravated trafficking in schedule W drugs, cocaine base in one count and fentanyl in the other, and faces forfeiture of $2,541 police allege was connected to drug trafficking. He has not yet resolved the charges against him, and has a court hearing coming up in April.
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