TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/021389/02138900.006

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 6KB | 100 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.