The man charged in Waynesboro’s largest bust for illegal mushrooms pleaded guilty this week in Circuit Court to possessing and distributing the psychedelic drug, which police found stored in more than 100 jars in his apartment. In July, authorities charged Felix Christopher Gutierrez, 31, with a single felony charge of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute.

A Richmond judge sentenced a man to 30 years in prison yesterday for a drug charge, refusing the defendant’s impassioned plea that the judge reduce a jury’s recommended sentence. The sentence marked the stiffest prison term in recent memory for a street-level drug conviction in Richmond Circuit Court, prosecutors said. It also highlights the gamble defendants take when they go to trial before a jury, and perhaps explains why so few do.

So Andre Agassi was a meth head. Gotta admit I didn’t see that one coming. Then again, I didn’t believe a potbellied fringe player who could barely hit the ball out of his shadow would become the first golfer to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Whatever Doug Barron was taking, it wasn’t working. Never thought I’d see the NFL commissioner begging Congress for a federal law to help discipline drug cheats, either. Roger Goodell’s league is full of strangely shaped 325-pounders who run like gazelles and he wants government protection?

A Middlesex County man was sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison for distribution of methadone, in one case to a man who died of an overdose as a result. Taylor Drew Munson, 22, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne under the terms of a plea agreement. He admitted distributing liquid methadone prescribed for his own use from April 2008 to March 2009.

For more than five years, a Verona couple bought and sold methamphetamine by the pound and then used profits to buy dozens of guns and vehicles while stashing spare bundles of cash in their bedroom closet. But the meth operation of Douglas and Lisa Rankin came crashing down in January, when Augusta County deputies and members of the WASSP Task Force raided their Verona home, sending each into the federal court system. They entered guilty pleas Monday in Harrisonburg.

A Fauquier County teacher faces child pornography and drug charges.

Chances are there’s cocaine in your wallet.

Sixteen-year-old Ryan Matko was slain while trying to “claw and crawl” away from his killer, prosecutors said in opening arguments in the trial of Detavis J. King.

Sixteen-year-old Ryan Matko was slain while trying to “claw and crawl” away from his killer. Shot once in the back, the Thomas Dale High School student fell paralyzed from the waist down. Yet he still tried getting away as Detavis J. King caught up with him, reached down with a .32-caliber revolver and delivered the fatal wound by shooting the teenager in the temple, Chesterfield County Commonwealth’s Attorney William W. Davenport said during opening statements yesterday in King’s trial.

A former Miss Maryland USA has pleaded guilty to obstructing a police investigation in a drug case.

A Richmond judge dismissed a felony drug charge yesterday against a former Richmond economic-development official. C. Cary Brown, who was arrested in November, met the conditions of the state’s first-time offender statute, and Circuit Judge Walter W. Stout III dismissed the charge in a brief hearing at the John Marshall Courts Building.

A Richmond circuit court judge this morning dismissed a drug charge against a former Richmond economic development official. C. Cary Brown, who was arrested in November, had the charge of cocaine possession dropped after meeting certain conditions set Feb. 9 when he entered an Alford plea in Richmond Circuit Court. Such a plea means that Brown did not admit guilt, but acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him.

A correctional officer faces charges of delivering marijuana to inmates at the Augusta County Correctional Center.

A domestic dispute between a husband and wife led Powhatan County deputies on Sunday to about 400 mature marijuana plants concealed on the couple’s property, police said. The husband, John Paul Russell Sr., 57, was charged with domestic assault and manufacturing marijuana at his home in the Little Fighting Creek subdivision off state Route 13, about a mile east of the Powhatan Courthouse area. His wife told deputies about the marijuana, which was camouflaged with other plants behind a shed, authorities said.

Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz became the latest star implicated in baseball’s ever-growing drug scandal, acknowledging yesterday that the players’ union confirmed he tested positive in 2003. Shortly after hitting the go-ahead home run that beat Oakland 8-5, Ortiz responded to a story on The New York Times’ Web site that he and former teammate Manny Ramirez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs six years ago.