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On Dec. 17, 2011, surveillance footage showed the man, Jerome Isaac, who was wearing a gas canister and a surgical mask, cornering the woman, Deloris Gillespie, 73, in the elevator of Ms. Gillespie's apartment building in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Mr. Isaac doused Ms. Gillespie with accelerant, then tossed a Molotov cocktail into the elevator.

"This has to be one of the most horrific crimes I have ever seen," the judge, Justice Vincent Del Giudice, said. "I had to review that video of the horrible death of that woman suffering."

Justice Del Giudice added, "That is not something one can take from one's mind."

Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Mr. Isaac, 48, said nothing during the hearing. He tilted his head down and closed his eyes for much of it.

Mr. Isaac was sentenced to prison despite recent questions about his mental health.

He pleaded guilty to killing Ms. Gillespie in November. But at a hearing later that month, Justice Del Giudice, citing a probation report, described how Mr. Isaac had said that he heard voices and that the devil had told him what to do.

At that hearing, Mr. Isaac's lawyer, Howard Tanner, said he believed Mr. Isaac was competent. Yet Justice Del Giudice, who was scheduled to sentence Mr. Isaac, ordered a mental health examination instead.

Though Mr. Isaac was diagnosed with a mental illness during that examination, Mr. Tanner said on Friday that Mr. Isaac was fit to be sentenced. The exact nature of the illness was not disclosed.

"He is fully competent and has been throughout my representation," Mr. Tanner said, adding: "This is a profoundly sad case — one of the saddest cases of my career."

Ms. Gillespie's daughter, Sheila Gillespie-Hillsman, who lives in Gary, Ind., had attended the sentencing hearing in November but was not in court on Friday.

In a telephone interview, Ms. Gillespie-Hillsman said she was "fed up" with the criminal justice process.

"I wanted to see his face, and I wanted him to see my face," Ms. Gillespie-Hillsman said. But, she added, the prospect of another delay was too stressful.

In a written statement read to the court on Friday, Ms. Gillespie-Hillsman described the anger and sadness her mother's death had caused. Yet Ms. Gillespie's family believed Mr. Isaac's sentence was adequate.

"I'm satisfied because he shouldn't be out on the streets again," said the prosecutor, Mark Hale, who read Ms. Gillespie-Hillsman's statement. "Especially since the 50-year sentence is without the hope of parole."

Mr. Isaac had once worked for Ms. Gillespie, helping clean her cluttered fifth-floor apartment. But Ms. Gillespie believed Mr. Isaac was stealing from her, so she fired him.

Mr. Isaac later told the authorities that he was upset with Ms. Gillespie because she had not paid him for his work. Mr. Isaac believed Ms. Gillespie owed him $2,000.