Ex-Aide To Bush Pleads Guilty

She said the months that led up to the thefts were trying for Allen.

"In addition to the demanding household of four young children, we lived out of storage boxes in a friend's basement," Jannese Allen said. "Claude's 14-hour workdays became more demanding after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

Montgomery County police charged Allen in March with theft of goods worth more than $500 and conspiracy to commit theft -- felonies punishable each by up to 15 years in prison. Detectives said that he conducted at least 25 fraudulent refund transactions from October to January.

Police said Allen would walk into a store, charge items to credit cards and take the items to his car. He would then return to the store, pick up identical items and seek refunds for them. Police said several of his fraudulent transactions were recorded by store surveillance cameras.

Yesterday's hearing provided some insight into Allen's state of mind last fall, but he and his attorneys declined to elaborate on why he acted so recklessly.

"A lot of people face stress, and they don't do anything like that," said University of Maryland political scientist Ronald Walters, who heads the school's African American Leadership Institute. "There's still that why out there. The psychological factor is the factor I'm missing in all of this. That's the tantalizing factor."

Political consultants said Allen will likely keep a low profile in the near future but might recover from this scandal.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of Washington officials who get in trouble and ultimately earn their way back and become public figures again," said political consultant and pollster Keith Haller, president of Potomac Inc. "For the most part, the public is relatively forgiving."

Allen, who was born in Pennsylvania and attended Duke Law School, made his debut in politics working for Republican legislators. He was a deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services and was nominated to a federal appeals court seat in 2003.

He joined the White House during Bush's second term and abruptly resigned from his $160,000-a-year job in February, shortly after being charged with misdemeanor theft. Detectives arrested him on the felony charges when he went to court to fight the misdemeanor accusation.

Johnson, who was more warm than stern in delivering his sentence, said he is fairly confident that Allen won't return to a courtroom as a defendant.

"You are a classic example and an enlightening and fresh example of the fact that shame is not dead," Johnson said. "I see a number of young people that come before the court that are not ashamed of what they did, and that's a tragedy. But clearly you're ashamed, as well you should have been."

After court was adjourned, Allen stepped back into the gallery and embraced his pastor. He wept quietly as the pastor whispered into his ear.