LOS ANGELES -- Convicted murderer Marvin Pancoast was sentenced Friday to 26 years to life in prison for the baseball-bat slaying of Vicki Morgan, mistress to the late presidential confidante Alfred Bloomingdale.
Pancoast, 34, rocked nervously in his chair as Superior Court Judge David Horowitz imposed the lengthy prison term for the 1983 murder. The former talent agency clerk will be eligible for parole in 13 years.
Horowitz denied two routine motions before passing sentence -- a request for a new trial and another to reduce the murder conviction to manslaughter.
The same jury that convicted Pancoast of murder ruled on July 24 that he was sane when he battered Morgan with a baseball bat as she slept in the North Hollywood condominium they shared.
Pancoast pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to the charges. The jury convicted him July 5 after only six hours of deliberations.
Defense attorney Arthur Barens told reporters he would file a new appeal, again arguing Pancoast was not legally sane at the time of the killing.
'I don't think Marvin Pancoast was mentally sane when he allegedly committed the slaying and I don't buy his confession,' he said. 'It's believability remains in doubt.'
He said Pancoast was 'calm and dispassionate' following the sentencing.
Barens had claimed Pancoast's longstanding mental problems led him to falsely confess to the July 1983 murder. He called the penalty phase proceedings a 'miscarriage of justice from the start.'
Pancoast recently told probation officer Lee Springer that he could not remember killing Morgan and feared that 'he will not survive in a regular prison and feels that he will be stabbed,' Springer stated in a report filed with the court.
Prosecutor Stanley Weisberg said he was satisifed with the sentence and added, 'until a decision is made that his homicidal tendencies are abated, certainly we will all feel more comfortable knowing Mr. Pancoast is incarcerated.
'I thought we had a very fair trial before Judge Horowitz. He gave us the best trial we could have had.'
Weisberg said he did not think the conviction could be overturned on appeal.
The main evidence against Pancoast was his taped confession to police, made hours after the killing, in which he says he killed Morgan because she treated him like a 'slave boy.'
Defense attorneys insisted the confession was worthless, however, saying Pancoast's deep desire to do himself harm prompted him to confess to a crime he did not commit.
Morgan, 30, earned national attention in 1982 when she filed an unsuccessful $11 million palimony suit against Bloomingdale, the department store heir who was a member of President Reagan's 'kitchen cabinet.'
Barens told reporters he did not think the sentencing was the end of the case, referring to the so-called 'sex-tapes' in which Morgan alledgedly cavorted with high government officials.
'I think you are going to hear more about the sex tapes, but not from me,' Barens said, indicating that he had been subpeoned for the trial, scheduled later this month, of attorney Robert Steinberg who allegedly filed a false report that the tapes were stolen from his office.
