Alvin K. Hellerstein, the Manhattan federal judge assigned to the criminal trial of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, died on Wednesday. He was 92.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain announced the death, saying Hellerstein's "energetic and dedicated service to this Court continued until his death," according to The Independent. CBS News reported that the Southern District of New York's spokesperson confirmed it.
President Bill Clinton appointed Hellerstein to the federal bench in 1998, when he was 64. He took senior status in 2011 but kept hearing cases, including the Maduro prosecution, which he accepted in January a few days after his birthday.
Earlier in October he handled the arraignment of Maduro and Flores on torture charges added to an existing narco-terrorism conspiracy case. Maduro, captured with his wife in a US military raid in Caracas earlier this year, twice declined to enter a plea, so the judge did it for him: "a plea of not guilty will be entered on behalf of Mr. Maduro," The Independent reported.
At Flores' bail hearing on Oct. 8 he coughed and struggled to speak at times. "I have a voice problem. As long as you can understand, hear me, I'll keep going," he told lawyers. He had scheduled the trial for next June.
Barry Pollack, an attorney for Maduro, told CBS News the defence was "saddened to learn of Judge Hellerstein's passing" and offered condolences to his family.
Hellerstein's death is unlikely to cause significant delay, said Duncan Levin, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor. "There's no automatic pause, and there's really no fixed period of delay," Levin told CBS News, adding that a new judge could keep the existing calendar or adjust it.
His rulings repeatedly went against Donald Trump. Three times he refused to move Trump's New York hush money case to federal court, most recently on Aug. 28 when he wrote that "the trial evidence does not infringe on presidential immunity." In 2020 he ordered Michael Cohen released from prison after finding the Justice Department had retaliated against him for planning a book.
Hellerstein also oversaw two decades of lawsuits over the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. In 2010 he rejected as inadequate a settlement of at least $575 million for thousands of people sickened by toxic dust at Ground Zero. He handled the fraud trial of Charlie Javice, convicted over the $175 million sale of her startup to JPMorgan Chase, and the securities fraud case of hedge fund founder Bill Hwang.
In 2015 he ordered a New York cable company to pay a Texas woman $229,500 after it sent her 153 robocalls.