A maximum seven-year prison sentence for dealing drugs in Butler County is not the end of James L. Bussle’s legal woes.

The 43-year-old Slippery Rock Township man still has to answer to charges in Ohio that could earn him more — potentially much more — time behind bars.

Bussle in the out-of-state case that dates back to 2013 is accused of a violent home invasion in which he allegedly held his victims at knife-point and zapped one with a stun gun.

On Friday, Butler County Judge William Shaffer sentenced the defendant to 27 to 84 months in state prison for his earlier guilty plea to a felony charge of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance.

In a separate but related case, Shaffer ordered Bussle to serve a concurrent sentence of 27 to 54 months on a felony weapons charge.

Both cases followed a February 2015 state police vice unit investigation into his drug trafficking in Butler County.

During the probe, investigators said, he sold narcotic painkillers and psychedelic mushrooms to a police informant.

Vice officers eventually nabbed him Feb. 25, 2015, during a traffic stop in Brady Township, not far from his home.

He was found carrying potent prescription painkillers in his pocket and a bag of morphine pills in the car he was riding in, according to court documents.

He admitted, police said, that he was on his way to a trailer park to meet a woman and deliver some of the morphine pills to her.

A subsequent search of the house where he had been living turned up three long guns in his bedroom.

Because of his criminal record that includes a felony conviction for armed robbery in Michigan, Bussle is barred in Pennsylvania from having any gun.

He was initially charged in the gun case with felons not to possess firearms. But he eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser felony count of carrying a concealed firearm without a permit.

He pleaded guilty to the top count in the drug case.

Shaffer, in his sentence Friday, accepted the terms of a plea-bargain agreement previously hammered out between prosecutors and Bussle’s attorney, public defender Joe Smith.

The defendant, who has been in the Butler County Prison since his arrest following last year’s traffic stop, was given credit for time served.

Shaffer, before imposing the sentence, asked Bussle if he had anything to say. The defendant was brief.

“I want to apologize to the court for my behavior that brought me before this court,” he said.

Assistant District Attorney Patricia McLean advised Shaffer of Bussle’s extradition detainer on him in Ohio.

A detainer allows the authorities in one state to “hold” a person for another county, state or country.

Ohio authorities, following Bussle’s arrest, notified state police that it would seek his extradition in connection with the home invasion three years ago in Ravenna, about 40 miles southeast of Cleveland

He is charged in that case with aggravated burglary and kidnapping.

Ravenna police said Bussle and two accomplices in March 2013 broke into the house of a couple they knew. Bussle, who at the time was living in nearby Kent, claimed the man there owed him $800, according to the police complaint.

During the alleged crime, Bussle shot a man with a stun gun and kicked him in the groin, police said. He later allegedly pulled a large butcher knife and held it to the throat of the victim’s girlfriend.

At one point, police said, Bussle held the couple and another man who was staying at the house at knifepoint and threatened to kill them, which accounts for the kidnapping charge.

Bussle and his accomplices later fled but not before taking a large-screen television from the home, police said.

Court records showed Bussle’s two accomplices were quickly arrested and subsequently convicted in the crime. Bussle got away and remained on the lam until last year in Butler County.

Smith, following Friday’s sentencing hearing, said his client wants to return to Ohio to face charges there.

Authorities in Ohio could “come and get him” immediately at the county prison, Smith said. Or, he noted, they could wait until after his transfer to the State Correctional Institute at Camp Hill.

At SCI-Camp Hill, Bussle would be processed, tested and evaluated before becoming a state prison inmate.

Once he lands in Ohio, Smith said, Bussle would serve the remainder of his Butler County prison stint there.