Prison employee Joyce Mitchell was sentenced on Monday for aiding two convicted murders escape from a maximum security prison in upstate New York this past June. 

NBC News reports Mitchell wept as she stood in a New York courtroom, awaiting her sentencing. The 51-year-old seamstress pled guilty to helping the two convicts escape the Clinton County Correctional Facility by smuggling tools in hamburger meat.

Mitchell was sentenced to a period of 2.3 to 7 years on a felony contraband count. Her lawyer said he is confident she won't spend more than four years in prison, with time off for good behavior.

Mitchell apologized to the judge for her actions, saying, "If I could take it all back I would."

According to Mitchell, inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt convinced her to smuggle hacksaw blades and a screwdriver bit into the facility, taking advantage of her position as a supervisor at the prison tailor shop. She says the two coerced her, and she was too afraid to refuse their demands.

Sweat and Matt used the tools to break through a prison wall on June 6. Mitchell was supposed to meet the two in a getaway car, but had second thoughts.

"I was supposed to come up and park by the manhole that they were gonna be coming out of. And I was supposed to pretend that I was making a phone call while they were coming out," Mitchell said. Mitchell added that she was also supposed to bring clothes and a tent, as well as a shotgun.

Mitchell decided not to show up, fearing that they would kill her and her husband.

"I had no intention of ever meeting them," Mitchell said in an interview on NBC's "Today." "I'm just someone who got caught up in something she couldn't get out of."

Matt was found and fatally shot in the Adirondack Mountains three weeks after their escape. Two days later, fellow convict Sweat was apprehended 2 miles from the Canadian border. Sweat, who was already serving life without parole, faces three counts of felony escape charges. He could receive up to seven years on each count.