Former circuit clerk Shelly Ashley-Palmertree reported to state custody Wednesday to begin serving a five-year jail term for embezzlement.

Palmertree, 44, is expected to serve the sentence handed down Sept. 29 at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County, the lone facility in the state that handles female prisoners not otherwise assigned to a trustee program.

Her sentence also involves paying back to the county $12,000 she admitted to embezzling on two different occasions in 2012 from civil and criminal accounts under her care as circuit clerk.

The sentence was handed down after special Judge Henry Lackey decided against granting a plea deal between her attorneys and the Attorney General’s Office that would have gotten her five years’ probation.

Palmertree sat in a parked car outside the Warren County Sheriff’s Department for about three hours Wednesday morning before entering the jail with a male confidant.

Palmertree’s attorneys had argued for a deadline Wednesday to pay back the embezzled funds. On Oct. 3, counsel for Palmertree paid $17,459 to avoid a civil contempt charge — and more jail time — as part of an unrelated case in county court involving a $36,000 settlement check interplead to her office after a civil matter and later determined to be missing.

Separately, a civil case involving more than $1.04 million in payments above the state’s salary cap for circuit clerks and questionable amounts paid to her predecessor in office, Larry Ashley, is expected to continue in January in Hinds County Chancery Court. The amount covers activity from 2006 to 2012 and includes interest and investigative costs.

On Oct. 9, Jackson attorney Marc Brand notified the chancery bench he was representing Palmertree in the proceedings. Vicksburg attorney and former circuit judge Frank Vollor withdrew from the case, citing an inability on her part to continue paying him.