Child-Murder Charges Dropped

A judge dismissed murder charges against a battered mother today because prosecutors said their investigation revealed she was “so physically and mentally incapacitated” that she was “not criminally responsible” for her 6-year-old adopted daughter’s death.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge John Stackhouse granted a motion to dismiss all charges against Hedda Nussbaum, the longtime lover of Joel Steinberg, who is charged with murder in the 1987 death of the first-grader he helped Nussbaum raise. She has agreed to testify against Steinberg. Prosecutors argued that Steinberg’s “vicious obsession” with dominating others drove him to beat his lover into slave-like submission and ultimately to kill the young girl.