Alvin K. Hellerstein, the Manhattan federal judge presiding over the prosecution of Nicolás Maduro, died on Wednesday morning at 92, surrounded by his family. By Wednesday afternoon, Maduro’s case had been randomly reassigned to Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan Federal Court.
Maduro faces torture and drug-trafficking charges, and his trial is scheduled for June 2027. Torres was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama in 2013. The reassignment means that she will take over a case Hellerstein had handled for over a decade, including the drug-trafficking case linked to Maduro that resulted in the conviction of Venezuela’s former intelligence chief, Hugo Armando Carvajal.
Two weeks before his death, Hellerstein presided over a hearing in Maduro’s case in a Manhattan federal courtroom. He cut off Maduro as the defendant spoke of 'false allegations' and entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.
An official at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York announced Hellerstein’s death on Wednesday. Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain called him “an insightful and dedicated lawyer” whose “energetic and dedicated service to this court continued until his death”, adding that “he is greatly appreciated and will be sorely missed.”
Hellerstein was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1998 and served as a US District Judge for the Southern District of New York for over 25 years. His docket included dozens of wrongful-death, injury and property-damage lawsuits brought after the 9/11 attacks.
His decisions also dealt with the limits on government power and the public’s access to information. In 2015, he ordered the US government to release a trove of photographs depicting the abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year, he blocked the Trump administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without a court hearing.
In 2020, Hellerstein ordered the release of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney. He concluded that the Department of Justice had tried to revoke Cohen’s home confinement and return him to jail in retaliation for writing a book.
Trump also came before Hellerstein in an effort to move his Manhattan hush-money criminal case from state court to federal court. Hellerstein rejected that application. In an April 2023 ruling, he wrote: 'Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president's official acts.'
His courtroom heard major financial cases as well. Hellerstein presided over a trial in which a jury found that French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan had helped prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, awarding US$20.75 million in damages to three plaintiffs from Sudan.
Last year, he oversaw the trial of Charlie Javice, the founder of an education startup who was convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million. He also presided over Bill Hwang’s 2024 trial. Hwang was convicted of fraud and market manipulation after the collapse of his Archegos Capital Management caused more than $10 billion of losses for banks.
Before joining the bench, Hellerstein obtained bachelor’s and law degrees at Columbia University and edited the law review. He served as a lawyer in the US Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps from 1957 to 1960. In 1960, he joined Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, where he spent 38 years before his appointment as a judge.
An Orthodox Jew, Hellerstein said in a 2020 podcast that he scheduled sentencing hearings for Fridays so that he could consider during the Jewish sabbath whether the penalties he had imposed were fair. In a 2013 law review article, he wrote: 'As a judge, and as a Jew, I consider that everything I do reflects God and affects His image.'
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