MURRIETA - A 50-year-old woman caught with drugs and guns while on parole for murder pleaded guilty today to transporting drugs and was immediately sentenced to five years in prison.

Henrietta Margarita Briones, a Soboba tribe member, also admitted having been released from prison less than five years before committing another felony. She will not have to serve any time on the drug charge, because she is getting credit for time served and good behavior.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Mark Mandio released Briones from a parole hold on the current case that had kept her incarcerated for close to four years.

However, Briones remained imprisoned because it is now up to the Board of Prison Terms to decide whether to put her behind bars again for violating her parole on the murder conviction.

Briones was convicted of killing her abusive ex-boyfriend in 1986 and served 17 years of a 17-year-to-life prison sentence, after which her family and supporters pleaded with the parole board to set her free. They claimed she suffered from battered woman's syndrome, according to the Free Battered Women Web site.

The parole board chose to free her and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not reject the recommendation.

Briones was out on parole when she was arrested in 2005.

She had been stopped for allegedly having illegally tinted windows and peace officers who searched the vehicle found drugs and two guns, Deputy District Attorney Gregory Albright said outside court.

Albright said his office agreed to a plea deal -- charges of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and being armed while committing a drug offense were dismissed -- because there were going to be some issues with the case and because she had already spent so much time in jail awaiting trial.

Briones could have faced 14 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Since her arrest, a detective on the case has been convicted of a sex crime and is in prison, said Albright, adding that the secondary detective on the case would have been available to testify at trial.

Jeffrey Keith Sanders pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges of sexual battery, penetration with a foreign object, and assault by a public officer, court records indicate.

The judge dismissed charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment and rape, sodomy or oral copulation.

He was sent to prison for five years, according to court records.