Lisa Steinberg

Case background and investigation

Elizabeth "Lisa" Steinberg was six years old when she was fatally injured in the Greenwich Village apartment where she lived with Joel Steinberg, a criminal defense lawyer, and his partner Hedda Nussbaum, a former children's book editor. Lisa had been born in 1981 to Michele Launders, a young single mother who, according to published accounts, paid Steinberg to arrange an adoption. He instead kept the baby. A New York judge ruled after Lisa's death that she had never been legally adopted, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Prosecutors said Steinberg struck the child on the evening of November 1, 1987, and then left the apartment for a dinner engagement. Nussbaum testified that Lisa lay unconscious on the bathroom floor for hours and that after Steinberg returned he smoked cocaine rather than seek help. Nussbaum called 911 at about 6:30 the next morning. Police and paramedics found Lisa comatose; officers also noted that Nussbaum herself had serious facial injuries. A 16-month-old boy, also living in the apartment without a legal adoption, was later returned to his birth mother.

Lisa was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where doctors found bleeding in the brain. She was declared brain dead and died after life support was withdrawn several days after she was admitted. Launders went to court for the right to bury her, and more than 1,000 people attended the viewing and funeral in mid-November 1987.

Steinberg and Nussbaum were both arrested and initially charged with second-degree murder. Prosecutors later declined to pursue the case against Nussbaum, concluding, as the Los Angeles Times reported in 1988, that years of beatings by Steinberg had left her unable to act; she became the principal prosecution witness. Her testimony over several days described a long pattern of violence in the household.

On January 30, 1989, after a trial of about twelve weeks, the jury acquitted Steinberg of second-degree murder and convicted him of first-degree manslaughter, according to United Press International. He was sentenced to eight and one-third to 25 years, the maximum then available for that offense. He has continued to deny responsibility for Lisa's death, including in a 2017 interview with the New York Post.

Steinberg was denied discretionary parole several times and was released on June 30, 2004, under the state's conditional-release rules after serving about two-thirds of the maximum term. He had been disbarred. In January 2007 a New York appellate court upheld a $15 million civil award against him in favor of Michele Launders. The case prompted wide public discussion of how schools, neighbors and agencies respond to signs of child abuse.