David Sweat

Joyce Mitchell apologized profusely as she was sentenced to 2 1/3 to seven years in prison, saying she acted in part out of fear. 

She also might have to contribute to the $120,000 in restitution the state is seeking for damages to Clinton Correctional Facility from the brazen June 6 escape. The judge showed little sympathy as he handed down the sentence and set a Nov. 6 restitution hearing.

In the second part of a two-part jailhouse interview aired Friday on NBC's "Today" show, Joyce Mitchell said she had no doubts Richard Matt and David Sweat would have killed her if she had met them with a vehicle and a shotgun like they asked after they escaped June 6 from Clinton Correction Facility.

The pair went on the run for three weeks. Matt was killed by a border agent June 26. Sweat was wounded and captured by a state trooper two days later.

In the first of a two-part jailhouse interview aired Monday morning on NBC's "Today" show, Joyce Mitchell told host Matt Lauer she cooperated with demands for help from Richard Matt and David Sweat because Matt had threatened members of her family.

"People need to know that I was only trying to save my family," said Mitchell, 51, who worked in the tailor shop at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, near the Canadian border in northern New York.

David Sweat, shackled and with his right arm in a sling, was brought to court in Plattsburgh from the special housing unit at Five Points Correctional Facility, where he's been kept in a solitary cell for 23 hours a day. A judge entered not-guilty pleas for Sweat on two felony counts of first-degree escape and a felony count of promoting prison contraband for possessing hacksaw blades.

Joyce Mitchell, 51, an instructor in the tailor shop at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, tearfully pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat escape. She faces a sentence of 2 1/3 to seven years in prison under terms of a plea deal with prosecutors.

Her lawyer, Stephen Johnston, said Mitchell realizes she made a "horrible mistake" by getting involved with Matt and Sweat, who staged an elaborate escape from the maximum-security prison on June 6.