U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, the Manhattan federal judge presiding over the narcoterrorism prosecution of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, has died at 92, the Southern District of New York confirmed Wednesday. No cause of death was given.
Edward Friedland, the district executive for the Manhattan federal courts, announced the death, ABC7 New York reported. About two weeks earlier, Hellerstein had presided over a hearing in the Maduro case.
A long career on the Manhattan bench
President Bill Clinton appointed Hellerstein to the federal bench in 1998, when he was 64, and he took senior status in 2011. Before that he served in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps and worked as a Manhattan litigator. He was known for an independent streak and strict courtroom discipline, ABC7 reported.
For roughly two decades he presided over dozens of wrongful death, injury and property damage lawsuits arising from the September 11 attacks. Lawyers said he met with victims' families for hours and rejected settlement offers he considered too low. The criminal side of 9/11 has stayed in the news too, as in the Supreme Court's refusal to revive the September 11 plea deals.
His docket also included a federal lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein, litigation over abuse evidence from Abu Ghraib prison and a ruling against the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans, CBS News reported. In 2020 he ordered Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen released from prison, finding the Justice Department's revocation of his home confinement was retaliatory.
The Trump hush money rulings
Hellerstein repeatedly rejected President Trump's efforts to move his New York state hush money conviction into federal court. After the Supreme Court's 2024 immunity ruling and a remand from the Second Circuit, which said it expressed no view on the outcome, he reconsidered and ruled against Trump again on August 28. He wrote that "the trial evidence does not infringe on presidential immunity," according to CBS.
The Maduro case
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by the U.S. military in Venezuela earlier this year and brought to New York. The charges include narcoterrorism, conspiring to commit torture, importation conspiracy and weapons offenses, and an October 8 superseding indictment also references other Venezuelan leaders, Townhall reported, citing the Justice Department. Both defendants are presumed innocent.
Hellerstein took the case in January, days after turning 92, and drew criticism over his age and over reports that he appeared to briefly fall asleep during the Charlie Javice fraud trial, CBS reported. Maduro's lawyer, Barry Pollack, said, "We were saddened to learn of Judge Hellerstein's passing and offer our condolences to his family."
What happens now: the newsroom's timeline
A judge's death does not end or reset a criminal case. The case is reassigned, usually at random within the same court, and the new judge inherits the existing docket and schedule.
January 2026: Hellerstein takes the Maduro case.
October 8, 2026: Superseding indictment, per the Justice Department.
Mid-October 2026: Hellerstein presides over his last hearing in the case.
October 28, 2026: The court confirms his death. A Justice Department source told Townhall a new judge "should be assigned this week."
June 2027: Scheduled trial date, according to Reuters as cited by Townhall. That is about seven months away.
Former federal prosecutor Duncan Levin told CBS, "There's no automatic pause, and there's really no fixed period of delay," adding that a new judge can keep or adjust the existing dates. "One of the main qualifications of being a judge is that you can read a lot of paper," he said.
The practical risk for both sides is a new judge revisiting rulings Hellerstein already made or needing more time to master a record that dates to cases he oversaw as far back as 2014. Defendants brought to the United States from abroad face long pretrial runways, a process we explained in How Extradition Works.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
