BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Attorney Robert K. Steinberg, who claimed two years ago to have videotapes of Reagan administration officials at sex parties, pleaded no contest Friday to a misdemeanor contempt charge for refusing to testify about the 'sex tapes' at a murder trial.
Municipal Court Judge Andrew Weiss sentenced Steinberg to three years informal probation and fined him $1,190. The lawyer also may undergo psychiatric counseling as part of his sentence.
Steinberg's attorney, Peter Brown, told the judge he conducted a thorough investigation and concluded Steinberg never had such tapes in his possession. Brown, however, said he believes some tapes did exist.
'I don't think there's any doubt that there were sex tapes, (but) who can say what's on them?' Brown said.
Prosecutors have long maintained that the tapes, which never surfaced publically, did not exist.
Steinberg claimed in July 1983 that he saw the videotapes after meeting with the accused killer of Vicki Morgan, the mistress of the late department store heir and presidential confidant Alfred Bloomingdale.
One day after Steinberg claimed to have seen the tapes, which he said depicted several Reagan administration officials at sex parties, he told Beverly Hills police they had been stolen from a gym bag in his office.
The District Attorney's Office sought a grand jury indictment against Steinberg, charging him with a single misdemeanor count of filing a false police report.
Steinberg pleaded no contest -- the legal equivalent of guilty -- to the lesser criminal contempt charge for his refusal to testify at a 1983 hearing for Morgan's killer about the existence of the tapes, Brown said.
Brown said the contempt charge is a lesser offense than the false police report charge because the state bar does not consider it a crime of moral turpitude.
Had he pleaded no contest to the false police report charge, Brown said, Steinberg's law license would immediately have been suspended.
Steinberg will still face a disciplinary hearing before the state bar because of his no contest plea, but Brown said he will argue that Friday's sentence is punishment enough.
Morgan, 30, was bludgeoned to death in July 1983 with her son's baseball bat in the North Hollywood condominium she shared with a former talent agency clerk, Marvin Pancoast.
Pancoast, 34, was convicted last year of her murder and was sentenced to 26-years-to-life in state prison. Pancoast's attorneys unsuccesfully argued to jurors that someone else had killed Morgan to silence her about the purported tapes.
