After Reno County District Judge Trish Rose granted a local man three years community corrections in a drug distribution case, the state has dropped the charges against him in another case.

Forty-two-year-old Mark Wells was charged with the sale of methamphetamine and using a communications device to make the drug transaction. That case goes back to Jan. 16, 2013, and was scheduled for a preliminary hearing Wednesday, but that didn’t happen with the state dropping the charges.

Apparently, the state is appealing the sentence handed down in the other case and doesn’t want to take the chance that Wells might be granted corrections in the case which was pending. So they dismissed the charges without prejudice, meaning they can refile the charges at some other time.

Wells was granted three years community corrections on a roughly 12-year sentence. He was convicted in a case from November 2012 after the Reno County Drug Unit served a search warrant on a 2012 Ford Focus.

The defense argued that he should receive a non-prison sanction because he’s gay and argued that, as a drug addict, he faces pressures that a straight person doesn’t.

Judge Rose granted the corrections and, again, the state is appealing that sentence.