The Nation - News from March 26, 1989

Joel Steinberg, convicted of killing his illegally adopted daughter, spent the first full day of his maximum sentence in a Brooklyn jail cell awaiting transfer to prison, officials said. The disbarred millionaire attorney, who was sentenced Friday to 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison for beating to death 6-year-old Lisa Steinberg, was forbidden visitors and was only allowed out of his cell for an hour of recreation in a jailhouse gymnasium, said Department of Correction spokeswoman Ruby Ryles. He was being held in punitive segregation, which entails being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day without radio or television, because he was discovered earlier this week with a 4-inch shank fashioned from a sharpened plastic spoon, she said. Steinberg’s first stop on the transfer route will be the state’s Downstate Reception Center in Fishkill.