Annie Dookhan, the state chemist who mishandled at least 60,000 cases by altering drug test results and forging documents at a Jamaica Plain lab, changed her plea Friday, and entered one of guilty, to which she was sentenced three to five years in prison. Had she continued with her initial not guilty and been convicted after trial, she could have been thrown behind bars for a larger five-to-seven years.

Dookhan was arrested in September 2012 at her Franklin, Mass. home and charged with two counts of Obstruction of Justice as well as Falsely Pretending to Hold a Degree from a College or University.

Also sentenced to two-years probation, Dookhan’s analyses provided the basis for convicting 1,100 inmates.

“Annie Dookhan’s egregious misconduct sent ripple effects throughout our entire criminal justice system,” Attorney General Martha Coakley said. “Her deliberate decision to tamper with drug evidence and fabricate test results harmed the integrity of the system and put the public’s safety at risk.”

According to a Boston Globe report from October, 300 people formerly held by the Department of Corrections on the basis of her lab results have been released since her arrest last year. Another 600 had their convictions expunged or temporarily suspended pending a new trial.

The defense team had hoped for a sentence of no more than a year in prison.

The Associated Press notes that “Prosecutors said Dookhan admitted ‘dry labbing,’ or testing only a fraction of a batch of samples, then listing them all as positive for illegal drugs, to ‘improve her productivity and burnish her reputation.'”

It had previously been suggested by former magistrate Robert Mulligan to essentially create an entirely new court system specific to the incident in order to handle to the volume of cases and maximize the number of resources needed to handle said volume.