6.30.2004

Joel Steinberg Released

If you lived anywhere near the NY metro area around 1987, you remember the case of Lisa Steinberg, Joel Steinberg, and Hedda Nusbaum. Today, Lisa would have been about 22 and Joel was released from prison:

Infamous child killer Joel Steinberg was released from prison Wednesday after nearly 17 years behind bars for the 1987 beating death of his 6-year-old adopted daughter.

The former lawyer, now 63, served two-thirds of the maximum 25-year manslaughter sentence. He has continued to deny responsibility for the girl's death.

Steinberg left the upstate prison with $104 in earnings from his inmate account and was picked up in a limousine by defense attorney Darnay Hoffmann.

Lisa Steinberg died in November 1987, three days after a vicious beating in the Greenwich Village apartment where she lived with Steinberg and his former lover, Hedda Nussbaum.
There has been much anger brewing about Steinberg's release, and Hedda has now quit her job and supposedly gone into hiding to reduce the chance she and Joel will reconnect.

I still find the girl's death so tragic and avoidable. Steinberg struck me as a very scary man.

But I'm also of a mindset that will not be too popular with some: Joel did his sentence, the one proscribed by the court and the justice system, and to society, his debt is paid. Whether his debt to Lisa can ever be paid, well, that is between his maker and Steinberg.