ST. LOUIS — Jeff Smith knew he was going to jail.

Sitting next to his girlfriend and parents in the second row of the 14th-floor federal courtroom of Judge Carol Jackson, Smith's case hadn't even been called yet, but he knew. Wearing a dark-blue pinstripe suit, pressed blue shirt and pink silk tie, Smith was awaiting the denouement of his once-promising political career.

The former state senator and one-time congressional candidate had earlier pleaded guilty to obstructing justice. When Smith ran for Congress, he broke election law by planning campaign fliers attacking an opponent and lying about his involvement. He lied again earlier this year when questioned by the FBI.

Before his own sentencing Tuesday morning, Smith was just an observer as Jackson pronounced sentence in an unrelated case that seemed worlds removed from Smith's political orbit.

Tina Rohr stood before Jackson wearing the orange jumpsuit of a jail inmate.

Her knees knocked, as she shook in nervousness awaiting her fate. Rohr is — or was, at least — a meth addict. She bought pseudoephedrine with the intent to make meth to support her habit. The craggly lines on her 46-year-old face give away the damage the drug has done in her life.

Her lawyer asked for leniency for a drug possession charge, but Jackson would have none of it.

Why?

Rohr also had obstructed the investigation.

"But for the obstruction, you probably would not be looking at a sentence like this," Jackson told Rohr before sentencing her to 97 months.

That's when Smith knew.

About a half-hour later, his lawyer, Richard Greenberg, would make his own plea for leniency based on Smith's record of public service, a record that even Jackson would concede was "extraordinary."

But the letters from a hundred or so supporters and compelling tales of public service couldn't keep Smith out of jail. Smith is the first to say he made his own bed.

In an interview at his Shaw neighborhood home after the sentence was pronounced, Smith said he pretty much knew he was going to jail once he learned that his one-time best friend, former state Rep. Steve Brown, tape-recorded his conversations as part of an FBI sting.

Brown's cooperation earned the praise of U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith, who compared him to the sorts of cooperating witnesses Goldsmith used to work with while prosecuting drug cases in Miami. That cooperation also got Brown probation instead of prison.

Smith, meanwhile, despite several statements of contrition and remorse, both in court and in the press, earned no such support from Goldsmith.

"We never saw a light go on in Mr. Smith's head," Goldsmith said during the later sentencing of Smith's former campaign aide, Nick Adams, who also received probation.

Smith called such an allegation "ridiculous." "I didn't know he had such power to see what was inside my head," Smith said of Goldsmith.

Smith knows well that he's now a disgraced former politician who lied to get ahead. He's "owned" his lies and acknowledged over and over that he shouldn't have done what he did.

But there's a difference, he maintains, between admitting wrong and facing the consequences, and taking it a step further and agreeing to wear a wire against his friends.

That's what Goldsmith wanted Smith to do. It's what Brown did to Smith.

Smith said no, and as soon as he made that decision he knew he was probably going to jail.

"Everyone has choices," Smith said. "Steve Brown made a choice, and I made a different choice. Obviously I face serious consequences as a result of that."

Those consequences became painfully clear to Smith as he watched a woman from a different world, Tina Rohr, go to jail.

She held her hands steady behind her back as a marshal clasped the handcuffs on. Rohr turned to a family member in the audience, and, crying, mouthed, "I love you."

She was led away, and Smith took her place in the center of the courtroom.

Soon, Jackson would use similar words in telling Smith that he would soon need to get his affairs in order.

"Our justice system doesn't work very well when people interfere with it," Jackson said.

Smith's lawyer, Greenberg, called the case "tragic."

But Smith uses a different word.

"Worthless," he said Tuesday.

He broke the law. He lied. He lost his career and best friend, all for covering up his connection to allegations he was willing to make himself anyway.

"For what?" he asks.

Jackson, the judge, had the answer.

Twelve months plus a day.