TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/021389/02138900.006

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.6 KB | 113 lines

                                                                                LAW, Page 68

A Question of Responsibility


Joel Steinberg is guilty, but are others also at fault?


    Every year in the U.S. more than 1,000 children die from
physical abuse, but Lisa Steinberg is the one whose name is
stamped in the public mind. Though her short, unhappy life of
six years was spent in a middle-class Manhattan household, it
was in circumstances of stunning callousness and squalor. Joel
Steinberg, 47, the disbarred attorney who illegally adopted
her, spent days at a time in a cocaine stupor. His live-in
companion Hedda Nussbaum, 46, was a former children's book
editor with a boxer's dented profile, the result of years of
beatings by Steinberg. And while only Steinberg stood trial for
Lisa's death, a shadow of complicity fell upon everyone who did
not act to prevent it: Nussbaum, the girl's neighbors and
teachers, and the child-welfare system.

    Last week a Manhattan jury found Steinberg guilty of
first-degree manslaughter, which carries a prison term of 8 1/3
to 25 years. Though the jurors emerged from eight days of
deliberation with plans for a reunion, they reached their
compromise verdict only after some heated quarrels. Most of
them entered the jury room believing Steinberg was guilty. Some
wanted to convict him on the more serious charge of
second-degree murder. But four holdouts were convinced that it
was Nussbaum who caused the brain injuries that killed Lisa, a
claim raised by Steinberg's attorneys late in the 13-week
trial, after several earlier defense strategies fizzled.

    In the end, the holdouts were swayed by the testimony of
medical experts who said that Nussbaum, dazed, malnourished and
horribly battered at the time of her arrest, was incapable of
the ferocious assault. Said juror Helena Barthell: "She could
not have picked up a 43-lb. child and propelled her into a
wall."

    The decision on whether to convict Steinberg of murder or
manslaughter hinged upon fine distinctions of intent and
responsibility. The murder charge would have required the jury
to find Steinberg guilty of "depraved indifference to human
life." There certainly seemed to be evidence of that. After
being pounded into unconsciousness, Lisa was left lying on a
bathroom floor in the couple's Greenwich Village apartment for
some twelve hours when Steinberg went out to dinner. Nussbaum
testified that after his return, when she told him the girl
could not be revived, he insisted they free-base cocaine before
calling for help.

    But the jury concluded that Steinberg's drug use -- he had
been smoking cocaine continually for days before the fatal
beating -- made him incapable of realizing the seriousness of
Lisa's condition. With what seems a measure of inconsistency,
however, the jury saw the same failure to get immediate medical
assistance as evidence of Steinberg's "intent" to do serious
bodily harm to Lisa, an important element of the manslaughter
charge.

    Steinberg's lawyers plan to appeal the verdict, arguing that
Acting State Supreme Court Judge Harold Rothwax improperly
instructed the jurors on the meaning of intent. They also
contend that he should not have permitted the jurors to view a
videotape made shortly after Nussbaum's arrest showing her
covered with scars, bruises and ulcerations.

    Jurors claim that they disregarded the riveting tales of
Steinberg's sadism told by Nussbaum, who testified for the
prosecution in return for dismissal of all charges against her.
To many who followed the trial with horror, the question of her
complicity in Lisa's death -- and in her own degradation --
remained unanswered. Even observers who were moved by Nussbaum's
condition were appalled by her testimony that she did nothing
when she suspected that the girl had been sexually abused.

    But feminist Gloria Steinem argues that Steinberg's
mistreatment left Nussbaum too traumatized to act. "As an
extreme victim, she forces us to do one of two things," says
Steinem. "Reject and blame her, or think we could be her. It's
hard to think we could be her -- so we'd rather blame her."

    The case focused attention on shortcomings in the system for
preventing child abuse. Though Lisa suffered repeated
mistreatment, her plight only once came to the attention of
city officials. Neighbors and adults at school who noticed her
bruises never reported their suspicions. During Steinberg's
trial, child-abuse hot lines recorded a flood of calls in the
New York City area, where two or three children are beaten to
death every week. After the verdict, bills were introduced in
the New York state legislature to toughen penalties for child
abuse.

    But many experts contend that harsher punishments are not
the answer. They want child-welfare workers to have more
manageable case loads and better training. "There will be a
flurry of public outrage," says Loretta Kowal, executive
director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children. "But unless it's translated into adequate
funding and training of professional staff, it's all going to be
a waste of time."

    For now, Steinberg is in protective custody in a New York
City jail while awaiting sentencing. He faces
multi-million-dollar lawsuits brought separately by Nussbaum
and by the natural mothers of Lisa and another child he
illegally adopted, a boy named Travis, now 2 1/2. Nussbaum
remains at a psychiatric facility in Katonah, N.Y., where she
has been since last March. Lisa is buried in Hawthorne, N.Y.,
under a gravestone that reads GOD'S ANGEL.