Court Report: Three Athens men sentenced for theft and drugs

An Athens man was sentenced Thursday in the Athens County Court of Common Pleas after attempting to dispose of stolen property.Joseph Carter was charged with one count of theft and one count of receiving stolen property. Carter pleaded guilty after accepting a plea deal of five years community control with an underlying sentence of 12 months.Carter was taken into custody in March 2014 after scrapping a Merritt Headache Rack, a semi-truck accessory, for metal at a scrap yard. The part was estimated to be over $3,000.An Athens man was sentenced Monday in the Court of Common Pleas after being found in possession of marijuana.Jason Dotson pleaded guilty after being charged with one count of possession of marijuana and one count for trafficking marijuana. Dotson was sentenced to five years of community control with an underlying sentence of 18 months.Dotson was found with over 1,000 grams of marijuana, almost 2 1/2 pounds. He was also in possession of $376, which was confiscated for being used in the trafficking of drugs.An Athens man was sentenced to four years and 11 months after violating his community control for a previous incident.Jeffrey Degarmore was arrested February 2014 for attempting to sell less than one gram of heroin.Degarmore was charged with three counts of trafficking heroin. Having been on community control for a previous incident in 2009, Degarmore violated the terms of the agreement; this resulted in jail time for both the previous offense and the charges recently brought against him.