When Flathead District Court Judge Robert Allison told a 48-year-old habitual offender in 2014 he was giving him one final chance to turn around a lifetime of crime, he meant it.

Allison went beyond the recommendations of prosecutors and defense attorneys and sent Myron Lloyd Cunnington to prison for 10 years on Wednesday for violating terms of his probation by drinking alcohol in bars and not remaining law-abiding. Cunnington also was accused of having been in possession of a methamphetamine pipe, but would not admit to that allegation.

Cunnington told the judge he took advantage of two five-year suspended sentences for a felony drug conviction handed down in 2014 for a month’s time before he began hanging around the wrong crowd again.

In a five-minute speech to the court, Cunnington asked the judge to follow the recommendations of his attorney and a prosecutor that called for Cunnington to go to prison for five years, with a consecutive five-year suspended sentence. He asked to go to a boot-camp program, saying it’s one of the few offered by the Montana Department of Corrections that he has not taken advantage of.

“The state has wasted way too much time and money on me, and until recently I didn’t realize that it was because anybody cared about me,” Cunnington said.

Public defender Greg Rapkoch also appealed to the judge.

“I don’t think he’s ever done anything so egregious that our focus shouldn’t be to help him,” Rapkoch said.

But Allison pulled out Cunnington’s criminal record, which contains at least eight felony convictions since he was a teen in the 1980s, not including some charges that were dropped as recently as this year.

“Auto theft, assault, burglary, theft, escape, drugs, drugs, and more drugs, basically,” Allison said as he perused the felony record. “Almost too many too count misdemeanors ... It’s just an absolutely appalling record.”

Allison said he remembers Cunnington making a similar appeal to him last year, saying he wanted to turn things around. Allison went against the advice of a probation officer in giving Cunnington another chance then, because several people came to the court and went to bat for Cunnington

“The last one was your last chance,” Allison said. “Not this one today.”

Cunnington will receive credit for 182 days spent in custody.

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or [email protected].