DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Teaneck, New Jersey - 1997)

Dad AVI KOSTER, who murdered his two kids (ages 12 and 10) in 1994 after losing custody, is sentenced to 30 years in prison. His ex-wife blamed the family court who let dad have unsupervised visitation despite psychiatric problems.

Doesn't seem we've made an awful lot of progress in this area in the last 12 years, does it?

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/25/nyregion/father-is-spared-death-penalty-in-killing-of-his-children.html?scp=181&sq=father+murder+child+custody&st=nyt

Father Is Spared Death Penalty in Killing of His Children
By ROBERT HANLEY
Published: Tuesday, March 25, 1997

Avi Kostner, who murdered his two children after losing custody of them in a long court fight, was spared the death penalty today when a jury failed to agree on his punishment.

Under New Jersey's capital punishment law, a jury's inability to agree unanimously on execution automatically requires that a defendant be sentenced to 30 years to life in prison. The trial judge, Jonathan N. Harris of New Jersey Superior Court, set a sentencing date of May 16.

Mr. Kostner, a 52-year-old former assistant scoutmaster for a Boy Scout troop at a Teaneck synagogue, had admitted killing the children, Geri Beth, 12, and Ryan, 10, in mid-1994 about six weeks after his estranged wife won custody of them in bitter seven-and-a-half-year custody fight.

Since then, he has blamed the murders on judges who heard his case and on his wife, contending that she planned to move with the children to Florida, prevent him from ever seeing them again and convert them to Christianity from Judaism.

After Mr. Kostner was led from court in handcuffs and shackles today, his former wife, tears welling in her eyes, blamed Family Court judges for her children's deaths. Lynn Mison contended that the judges knew of Mr. Kostner's past psychiatric problems but still allowed him to have unsupervised visits with the children after she had won custody. On one such visit, Mr. Kostner killed them by strangulation and an overdose of drugs.

''This should not have happened,'' she said. ''There was enough warning.''

Mrs. Mison, who has remarried, appeared after the verdict with her parents, John and Helen Sturman. She thanked the jury for its time and said she had ''no strong conviction'' for either the death penalty or a long prison sentence for her ex-husband.

''I had prayed that the jury chosen would do God's work,'' she said. ''I know the decision reached was not the jury's alone.''

Mr. Kostner had shown no emotion as the jury forewoman read the decision. For the most part, he glanced casually at a verdict sheet that his lawyer, Cathy L. Waldor, had before her. At one point, he dabbed at his nose with a tissue.

As he left the courtroom, he glanced back at his ex-wife and her parents in the spectator gallery and smiled broadly.

''In his small world,'' Ms. Waldor said, ''he's happy he's alive and is going to be alive.''

She said she was pleased that the jury had considered what she called his ''serious mental illness'' during its three days of deliberations.

''It doesn't feel like a win,'' she said. ''It's the end of a long and tragic story. The man will die in prison. He deserves to be punished for what he did.''

The prosecutor in the case, John Higgins, said law enforcement authorities ''accept and honor'' the verdict. He called Mrs. Mison and her parents good and honorable.

''They have endured a tragedy I daresay none of us can understand,'' Mr. Higgins said.

The jury's decision suggested a majority of the 12 favored a prison sentence for Mr. Kostner, because of its votes on a series of 11 ''mitigating'' factors it was required to consider in its deliberations.

Most of these factors centered on defense lawyers' contentions that Mr. Kostner was abused by a stepfather as a child, that he had long suffered from a mental disorder, that he was mentally disturbed at the time of the murders, and that his ''distorted perception of his Jewish faith'' was a factor in the murders.

The jury found that nearly all the mitigating factors were present. But the vote margin was not always the same, varying from 10 to 2 in some instances and 5 to 7 in another.

Four of the mitigating factors received a vote of 8 to 4, including the statements that Mr. Kostner suffered from an ''extreme mental or emotional disturbance,'' that he was impaired from childhood and that a distorted view of his Jewish faith influenced his decisions to commit the murders.

To impose a death penalty under New Jersey law, a jury must agree unanimously that mitigating factors in a homicide are outweighed by ''aggravating'' factors in a homicide. In the Kostner case, the fact that it was a double murder was the only aggravating factor. The jury's deep split ruled out such a verdict.

The jury had another sentencing option. It could have agreed unanimously that the aggravating factor failed to outweigh the mitigating factors. Such a decision would have required a minimum 30 years to as much as a life sentence.

But the jury told Judge Harris it could not come to that conclusion, either.

Instead, it opted for the third choice on the verdict sheet -- that it could not unanimously agree on punishment. That choice, too, requires 30 years to life in prison.

Afterward, most of the jurors hurried from the courthouse without comment. A 30-year-old woman who insisted on remaining anonymous said she was in a minority favoring the death penalty. She said the jury's split centered on Mr. Kostner's childhood and his mental state.

She also said she wished she could apologize to Mr. Kostner's ex-wife and her parents.