Joel Barnet Steinberg (born May 25, 1941) is a disbarred New York City criminal defense attorney who attracted international media attention when he was accused of rape and murder, and was convicted of manslaughter, in the November 1, 1987, beating and subsequent death of a six-year-old girl, Elizabeth ("Lisa") Launders, whom he and his live-in partner, Hedda Nussbaum, had illegally adopted.

[1][3][2] Steinberg shared a Greenwich Village, Manhattan apartment at 14 West 10th St.[4] with Lisa, Mitchell (a younger child, also illegally adopted), and his live-in partner, Hedda Nussbaum.

Steinberg had reportedly been hired by a single mother named Michele Launders to locate a suitable adoptive family for Lisa, but he instead took the child home and raised her with Nussbaum.

At Steinberg's twelve-week trial, his defense argued that Nussbaum's extensive injuries resulted from a consensual sadomasochistic relationship between the two defendants.

Her attorneys claimed that Nussbaum's decision to stay with Steinberg, even though she was a victim of domestic violence, was a sign of battered woman syndrome.

Steinberg had spent most of his imprisonment at New York State's supermax prison, the Southport Correctional Facility, presumably to prevent him from being attacked by other inmates.