Photo: Penny Juanita Whitson
Penny Juanita Whitson has been before the bench in Baxter County Circuit Court on numerous occasions.
The 58-year-old Whitson was back Thursday where she pled guilty to charges in five cases and was given 15 years in prison.
Whitson has had criminal charges filed against her for the last 24 years and has been involved in criminal activity in Baxter, Boone, Faulkner, Marion, Madison and Washington counties.
At one point, court records indicated Whitson had 33 felony convictions in Arkansas and Missouri.
It apparently gets confusing even to Whitson. During a 2012 revocation hearing in Baxter County Circuit Court, she admitted during testimony she “had lost count of the number of previous felony convictions” she had on her record.
In one of the cases dealt with Thursday, Whitson was charged with stealing a truck from her former workplace in Springdale.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Whitson drove the truck allegedly stolen from D&A Distributing in Springdale to Gassville where she stayed with her cousin.
The truck was parked at her relative’s apartment complex.
Investigators reported Whitson’s relative and her son had even “discussed how Whitson could afford such a nice truck.”
Not only was the truck stolen, but the license plate turned out to have been stolen as well.
In addition to the truck theft, the large number of charges Whitson faced in the five cases included multiple counts of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia, having possession of contraband items in the Baxter County jail and failing to appear in court.
Whitson is an inmate at the McPherson Unit of the state prison system in Newport.
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