YOUNGSTOWN — Robert Howell, 54, of Springdale Avenue, was sentenced to four to six years in prison Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court after pleading guilty earlier to a first-degree felony cocaine possession charge March 16.

Howell’s sentencing hearing was somewhat unique in that eighth-grade students at Boardman Glenwood Middle School took a field trip to the courthouse Tuesday to see Mahoning County’s criminal justice system at work.

The students and one or more of their teachers, plus speakers such as Mahoning County Area Court Judge Molly Johnson and multiple local attorneys, filled the entire courtroom, including the jury box.

Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Ed Walsh told Judge Anthony Donofrio that prosecutors did not make a specific recommendation for Howell’s sentence at the time of Howell’s plea agreement.

But he pointed out that the conviction requires a mandatory prison term of three to 16 1/2 years.

Walsh said that by Howell pleading guilty, he “acknowledges that on July 29 of last year, he was driving his cousin’s car on a suspended license.”

Walsh said Youngstown police saw him failing to stop at a stop sign. They made a traffic stop and found a small bag of crack cocaine in Howell’s pocket and found “two large bags of cocaine in his shoes totaling 49 grams of cocaine,” which is about 1.7 ounces.

Walsh pointed out that five grams is enough for a low-level felony charge. But Howell had “ten times that amount,” making it a first-degree felony.

Walsh said this incident is not Howell’s first encounter with drugs. “When you look at his history … in 2018, he was sentenced on 10 counts of drug trafficking and one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, for which he received two years in state prison.”

He also had a breaking and entering conviction in his past and was placed on probation, court records show.

Walsh noted that the “drug epidemic has led to a serious loss of life in our country, a strain on our health care system. It has clogged our courts. It has undermined the very fabric of our society. The defendant has played a role in facilitating those evils.”

Defense attorney Mark Lavelle said he believes a three-year prison sentence would be appropriate. He agreed that Howell “does participate in that epidemic,” but Howell also is “a victim” of that epidemic. “He is a raging, drug dependent person and has been for years. He engages in (drug dealing) to feed his own drug habit.” Lavelle said Howell “has been clean since July of 2025.”