Girl's Killer Tries to Reduce Judgment, but Is Dealt Only Rebuke

Girl’s Killer Tries to Reduce Judgment, but Is Dealt Only Rebuke

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

An appeals court refused yesterday to reduce the $15 million award that Joel B. Steinberg owes to the mother of Lisa Steinberg, the 6-year-old child killed nearly two decades ago by Mr. Steinberg in one of New York City’s most notorious child abuse cases.

Mr. Steinberg, who had illegally adopted the girl, asked the court to reduce the award to Lisa’s mother, Michele Launders, because the child’s death was preceded by “at most eight hours of pain and suffering.”

Mr. Steinberg, who was once a lawyer, acted as his own lawyer in his appeal to the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The court majority rejected his argument in strong moral terms.

For Mr. Steinberg to diminish eight hours of pain and suffering by a child “demonstrates that he is as devoid of any empathy or human emotion now as he was almost 20 years ago when he stood trial for Lisa’s homicide,” the majority said, in a decision written by Justice James M. Catterson.

Two of the five judges dissented, saying the award did not fall within the boundaries set by case law. But those in the majority said that they felt free to evaluate the award subjectively because they did not know of any other case like it.

Mr. Steinberg fatally injured Lisa, a first grader, by knocking her down with a blow to her head about 6 p.m. on Nov. 1, 1987, and leaving her without medical attention “while he enjoyed dinner and freebased cocaine,” the decision said. His companion, Hedda Nussbaum, put Lisa on the bathroom floor of their Greenwich Village apartment and tried to revive her, the court said, before joining Mr. Steinberg to freebase cocaine.

Lisa was 3 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 43 pounds, and medical evidence showed many bruises from previous abuse, the decision said. She may have been conscious at first, doctors said, and her brain had been swelling for 6 to 12 hours before she received medical treatment. She died in a hospital on Nov 4, 1987.

Mr. Steinberg was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter. He was released from prison in 2004, after serving 16 years.

Quoting phrases from the testimony in Mr. Steinberg’s trial, the judges said: “For Lisa, lying on a bathroom floor, her body aching from bruises of ‘varying ages,’ her brain swelling from her father’s ‘staggering blow,’ those 8 to 10 hours so cavalierly dismissed by Steinberg must have seemed like eternity as she waited and wondered when someone would come to comfort her and help make the pain go away.”