Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP Shannon Dannible, the former Litchfield school principal serving prison time for embezzling $152,000 from the school, enters Superior Court for Thursday's hearing on her motion asking the court for administrative home confinement.

NASHUA – Everyone from her lawyers and her family to prison officials and even many of her fellow inmates seem to agree, former Litchfield principal Shannon Dannible told a judge Thursday, that she is the ideal candidate for administrative home confinement as she serves out her term of one and a half years.

However, Senior Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Agati viewed Dannible’s sometimes emotional appeal in favor of her home-confinement motion as just “another sentencing argument to try to change the consequences of her actions,” Agati told Superior Court Judge Jacalyn Colburn.

Dannible, 42, formerly of Amesbury, Massachusetts, was sentenced in October to one and a half to 15 years in State Prison, the result of a plea agreement reached after three years of proceedings on a felony theft charge accusing her of stealing $152,000 from St. Francis of Assisi School in Litchfield, while she was principal of the private elementary school.

Dannible appeared in court Thursday with her Nashua-based attorneys, Roger “Rusty” Chadwick and Joseph Fricano, for the nearly one-hour hearing, which was also attended by Dannible’s parents and her brother.

Colburn, after hearing the sides’ respective arguments, took the matter under consideration, saying she wanted to review the arguments and documents submitted by prison officials before ruling on the motion.

The judge said she would issue her ruling as soon as possible, and hoped to do so within a couple of business days.

The scandal, which broke when a grand jury indicted Dannible in August 2013, rocked the tiny St. Francis of Assisi community, and, according to Agati, left an unknown number of students with “lasting educational deficiencies … because of her actions.”

The indictment came about two years after Dannible left St. Francis of Assisi, where she was principal from August 2007 until June 2011, when school leaders informed her that her contract was not being renewed.

The school’s pastor, meanwhile, had begun reviewing its financial records after learning of possible irregularities with the finances.

When a full audit uncovered widespread deficiencies, school leaders reported possible criminal activity to the Attorney General’s office. The subsequent investigation led to Dannible.

As various hearings and other proceedings got underway in the case, Dannible’s courtroom behavior grew increasingly odd, to the point that her attorneys filed a motion asking the court to determine whether she was legally incompetent to stand trial.

After more than a year of back and forth, Dannible was ultimately ruled competent, which led to the months of negotiations toward a possible plea agreement.

Prosecutors, during the Oct. 10 plea and sentencing hearing, asked Colburn to impose a term of five to 15 years in prison, with two and a half years of the minimum suspended, while Chadwick recommended Dannible serve no prison time.

Colburn settled on the one-and-a-half-year minimum sentence, telling Dannible she would “be doing a disservice” if she adopted Chadwick’s recommendation.

Meanwhile, at Thursday’s hearing, which began more than an hour late due to delays in transporting Dannible to Nashua from the State Prison for Women in Goffstown, a an occasionally emotional Dannible told Colburn she “has learned a lot … my world was very, very tiny before I went to prison.”

Expressing gratitude for the support she said she received from other inmates, Dannible said she was encouraged to take the first step forward by applying to be put on work release.

While prison officials “felt it was something I could do,” Dannible said she “was not prepared” for what she saw when she first arrived at Shea Farm, a transitional housing unit that’s part of the prison’s Community Corrections work-release program.

“There were drugs everywhere,” she told Colburn, adding that “people were pulling drugs out of their purses.”

Dannible said the experience triggered “a breakdown,” but added, “fortunately, they allowed me to go back” into the general population.

Officials told her to “do what you need to do to get through,” Dannible said, encouraging her to work toward getting released on home confinement.

If her motion is granted, Dannible would live with her parents in their Seacoast New Hampshire town, she told Colburn.

“Nothing else would change … I’d still be an inmate. But (home confinement) would give me the opportunity to get therapy, to work on supporting my family … to go back to work, to make amends to a community that suffered due to my instability and my actions,” Dannible said.

She grew particularly emotional referring to her children, especially her daughter, who, she told Colburn through tears, “is struggling … I’m so scared that without a mom, she’s going to become a statistic,” she said.

But Agati didn’t appear to buy much of Dannible’s appeal, noting that it’s been only six months since she was sentenced to prison “and all we’re getting today is another sentencing argument.”

Agati took exception to Dannible’s depiction of Shea Farm, where, he said, “a very select group of inmates are allowed to go … who are working incredibly hard to get out, to maintain family relationships, to get the rehab they need.

“I’m sorry (Shea Farm) isn’t as comfortable as the home office she’s going to have set up at her parents house,” Agati said, referring to preparations her parents have made in their home in hopes her home-confinement motion is granted.

Agati said the state takes no position on Dannible being accepted into the work-release program, “but home confinement? No. The original sentence is appropriate,” he said.

“The state completely objects to any sort of administrative home confinement.”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com, or @Telegraph_DeanS.