Beverly Masek's sentencing Thursday morning was a chance for her to take responsibility for pocketing $4,000 from an oil services company executive in exchange for her vote. And she told the judge she did. But what I heard in the courtroom was a long list of reasons why it wasn't really her fault.

The five-time elected member of the Alaska House of Representatives took a bribe in 2003 from Veco Corp. chief executive Bill Allen because she was depressed and going through a divorce, her attorney, Rich Curtner, explained to the judge. She was cash-strapped and desperate and drinking too much. The defense sentencing document -- built on letters from public figures and a psychiatric evaluation -- painted a picture of her that seemed fragile, like a besotted Victorian heroine wandering the halls of the capitol.

Masek was vulnerable and prone to relationships with domineering people, it said, a passive, dependent personality. She was unsophisticated and from a village, childlike, overwhelmed and adrift in Juneau when she had no one to tell her what to do. She was powerless to the pull of the Legislature's culture of corruption. Not to mention she had a habit of drinking too much. Reading all that, one might have expected her to faint right there in the courtroom. But instead she just sniffled, dabbing her eyes with a wadded Kleenex.

Masek was looking at 18 to 24 months under federal sentencing guidelines. But she didn't want to go to jail, her lawyer told the judge. She wanted to go to alcohol treatment.

In my seat in the front row, I was unmoved. Masek navigated the Iditarod Trail four times. Did she really have such a hard time, no matter how stressed or broke or hung-over she might have been, navigating the difference between right and wrong in Juneau? She had taken the oath of office five times, and been in the Legislature nearly 10 years when she deposited Allen's money in her bank account. The defense was reaching for heart-strings, playing a cloying victim tune. But it relied on a musty stereotype about Native women I don't buy. Masek was no naive village girl. She was an adult and an elected official. It seemed reasonable, even if she had an alcohol problem, that she should be expected to act like one.

I thought about the Saturday afternoons I spent down at the jail courthouse, watching less prominent defendants sitting in lines behind Plexiglas, waiting to hear their charges read for the first time. It was likely every one of them had problems with alcohol or dysfunction or divorce or desperation. Many were unsophisticated. But most of them ended up in jail. Why? Because being drunk or sad or dumb didn't make their crimes go away.

It was humiliating for Masek to walk through the Federal Building on Thursday morning followed by cameras. And certainly her life has not been easy. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school. Her attorney argued she had a difficult marriage to a controlling husband. Alcohol has been an ongoing struggle. But holding public office means meeting high standards. And there were others with similar stories who managed in Juneau just fine.

I might have had more sympathy had this been an isolated irresponsible decision. But there were others. There was her problem with using the campaign funds to pay personal bills. And the time she made her aide give her money or risk losing his job. And the Legislative session where she barely showed up. And, most serious, a drunken driving incident in 2005.

She told the judge she was sorry for what she did and that she was ready to change. Like a musher on a broken sled runner, she said, she wanted to get fixed and move on. But I couldn't help thinking that she'd known for months this day was coming. She was out of jail and could have entered any number of alcohol treatment programs. She could have found a 12-step program. But only two weeks before the sentencing, she was drunk despite a court order, causing a ruckus in her neighborhood. Was she really ready to change?

Soon it was Judge Ralph Beistline's turn to deliver the sentence. He said all the right things. She abused the public trust, stumbling significantly over the last 10 years. Her personal problems didn't mean she could commit crimes. Lots of fancy friends speaking on her behalf wasn't going to sway him.

But then he delivered the sentence: six months, a third of the minimum under court guidelines. And mandated alcohol treatment. He called it "compassionate," and it maybe was, but I couldn't help feeling it wasn't enough.