DARLINGTON — A 38-year-old Argyle woman was sentenced July 15 to six and a half years in prison and five and a half years on extended supervision for stealing money, prescription drugs and household items while on probation.

Amanda Lynn Penniston pleaded guilty in Lafayette County Circuit Court to two Class F felony counts of burglary, two Class I felony counts of possessing narcotic drugs and three Class A misdemeanor counts of theft. Related charges including additional counts of burglary were dismissed.

Penniston also had her probation revoked in a previous case in which she pleaded no contest to stealing money from a rural Argyle couple who hired her as their accountant.

Penniston was on probation in that case last year when she snuck into her neighbor’s residence on Colfax Street dozens of times and helped herself to money, opioid pain medication, food, clothing and kitchen utensils, according to a criminal complaint filed in October.

The resident’s family members set up cameras in the house in July, after money and medications started going missing. The camera footage shows Penniston entering the home about 30 times between Aug. 3 and Oct. 4, according to court documents.

During some of the burglaries, Penniston wore a black mask. One night she came in around 3 a.m. with a flashlight and can been seen in the video footage “crawling on the floor looking through things.” Another night, the resident came home from dinner with her grandson and found his birthday card with $50 inside missing, along with hydrocodone pills.

Family members of the neighbor spoke at Penniston’s sentencing about the sense of safety she had taken from their mother-in-law.

She “would have given you anything if you would have asked her,” one family member told Penniston in court. “You have taken her sense of safety and her safe place from her.”

Another family member told Penniston, “What I saw on those videotapes made my stomach turn. What you did was inexcusable.”

Penniston’s mother told the court she hoped jail time would help her daughter overcome her drug addiction.

“She was doing it to support her own addiction. I know she regrets her actions,” the mother said.

District Attorney Jenna Gill asked the judge to consider Penniston’s previous case and current case separately. In the previous case, Penniston was sentenced to 20 days in jail and two years on probation for stealing nearly $5,000 from an elderly couple who hired her to do accounting work for them.

Gill said the victim in that case would call her office and the Sheriff’s Office regularly and attended every single hearing until she passed away in March.

Gill read part of a statement from the victim, in which she stated Penniston caused her and her husband extreme stress and made a “large infringement on their quiet life.” The victim also wrote in the statement that she lost sleep and weight due to stress and felt betrayed because the financial issues “consumed” her life.

For the second case involving repeated burglaries of the neighbor’s home, Gill said the victim felt she was losing her mind when pills and random household items went missing.

“Doing those things while the victim was home was disturbing,” Gill said, noting that the victim went without her pain medications for weeks because of Penniston and began to sleep with a knife under her pillow.

“I don’t see a lot of crimes that so heavily impact so many people. The impact of this case is about the victims and the abuse they endured over the years and not the defendant and her drug addiction,” Gill said.

Defense attorney Adam Witt said his client has never been to prison and she understands what she did was wrong and that there are real implications.

“Drug addiction has a chemical hold on the brain. It pushes aside basic duties because it wants more of that drug. It rearranges priorities and leads to situations like this,” Witt said.

The root of Penniston’s problem was she was compelled to steal to feed her addiction.

“It is not an excuse for her actions but it explains her behavior. You cannot punish the addiction away. ... It is up to her to rehabilitate herself,” Witt said.

When given the opportunity to speak to the court, Penniston said she took full responsibility for her actions and she doesn’t know how she will forgive herself.

“Because of my poor selfish choices, (the victim’s) sense of security was compromised. I am very ashamed that I deprived her of her property as a short-term solution to my problems and my addiction problem. I was not thinking clearly at the time and did not realize the pain my actions were inflicting on her, and that is unacceptable,” Penniston said.

She said that since she has been in jail she hasn’t been able to care for her children and that has been devastating for her. Being incarcerated for the last nine and a half months has allowed her to get clean and sober, she said, adding that the court can be confident she will not reoffend.

“I realized I can focus on living a happier, productive life,” Penniston said.

Lafayette County Judge Duane Jorgenson said that in imposing a sentence he had to consider the aggravated nature of Penniston’s offenses.

“The only way to describe what has happened here is outrageous,” Jorgenson said.

Jorgenson said he agreed with Witt about the struggles Penniston has had beating her addiction, but he pointed out that Penniston squandered a second chance when she was granted probation and the opportunity of treatment.

Penniston chose to “minimize her addiction, discounted it and really made no serious attempt to engage in it,” Jorgenson said.

Jorgenson said anything short of incarceration in the prison system would not do much to deter Penniston and her behavior.

“When I step back and look at this, what I am left with are two elderly people that have just been violated. The sense of betrayal that they have experienced is just palpable,” he said.

Lafayette County has a strong sense of trust and community and this kind of behavior violates that, he said.