The live-in girlfriend of a Tallulah physician accused of supplying her drug habit will spend two years in prison.

Circuit Judge M. James Chaney sentenced Patti Carr to two years in prison followed by three years probation for five counts of prescription fraud. In prison, Carr must complete long-term alcohol and drug treatment.

She faced up to 25 years in prison. The minimum possible sentence would have been probation.

Carr pleaded guilty in September and has maintained that her boyfriend, Dr. Lawrence Francis Chenier III did not knowingly supply her with addictive painkillers.

Chaney said he found Carr’s statements to the court troubling.

“If all of that is true as you say, your actions almost caused an innocent man to go to prison,” Chaney said during the sentencing.

If the statements she made were false, Chaney said, then she was covering for Chenier.

“Either one of those scenarios is troubling,” he said.

Defense attorney John Bullard asked the court to send Carr to Ninth Circuit Drug Court. The drug court program allows first-time, non-violent offenders who are addicted to drugs an alternative to prison. Bullard argued that Carr’s experience kicking her drug habit could help others in drug court.

“I think Ms. Carr would have a special addition and benefit from doing that,” Bullard said.

During a pre-sentencing hearing in September, Carr told the court she had entered a drug treatment and had been taking Suboxone — a drug used to block the effect of painkillers.

Dr. T.A. Neumann, who shares an office with Chenier, said he prescribed Suboxone to Carr.

In October, Chenier was found not guilty of conspiracy, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the 73 counts of prescription fraud against him. District Attorney Ricky Smith said he is considering whether to re-try Chenier, who lives in Vicksburg but practices medicine in Tallulah.

Chenier was not in the courtroom Tuesday during Carr’s sentencing.

In pre-trial motions leading up to Chenier’s trial, his defense attorneys eluded to Carr reaching a deal that guaranteed her a drug court sentence in exchange for testifying against Chenier. Chaney said there was no basis for those statements.

“This court was certainly not aware of that,” he said.

Narcotics agents found about 300 empty pill bottles in the home Carr and Chenier shared at 100 Colonial Drive when the home was raided in 2011. Many of the bottles were stuffed into a plastic bag in the closet of a bedroom shared by the couple, prosecutors said.

Chenier’s defense attorneys argued that he had no knowledge of Carr’s drug abuse and that Carr could have stolen his prescription pad.

During Chenier’s trial, Carr was presented with one of the prescriptions the doctor had supposedly written to her, but she would not identify the signature as his.