NY federal judge overseeing Nicolás Maduro case dies at 92

Antonio María Delgado, Miami Herald on Oct 28, 2026

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U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, the veteran Manhattan jurist who was overseeing the criminal case against Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, died Wednesday morning at age 92, leaving the trial of Venezuela’s former strongman without a judge less than eight months before it was scheduled to begin.

Hellerstein’s death was confirmed to The New York Times by Ed Friedland, district executive for the Southern District of New York, where the judge had served for nearly three decades. Friedland also told the newspaper that the Maduro case, along with Hellerstein’s other pending cases, would be randomly reassigned to another federal judge.

It was not immediately clear whether the change would affect the trial’s scheduled start date of June 14, 2027, or other hearings already on the calendar.

Hellerstein, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1998, presided over numerous high-profile cases during his lengthy judicial career. His assignment to the Maduro prosecution placed him at the center of an extraordinary criminal case involving a former head of state captured by U.S. forces.

Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, were captured by the U.S. military in Caracas on Jan. 3 and transported to New York, where they remain in federal custody in Brooklyn.

Both have pleaded not guilty to federal charges involving narcoterrorism, cocaine trafficking and firearms offenses. An expanded indictment filed Oct. 8 added allegations that the couple conspired to torture political opponents and American citizens imprisoned in Venezuela.

Federal prosecutors accuse Maduro and Flores of directing a campaign of political repression involving brutal interrogations, arbitrary detentions and the mistreatment of prisoners. The indictment describes alleged incidents involving electric shocks, simulated drowning, beatings and other abuses at Venezuelan detention facilities.

The revised indictment also extended the narcoterrorism conspiracy charge to Flores, who had not previously faced that accusation.

During their most recent court appearance, on Oct. 15, Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to the new charges.

At that hearing, Hellerstein granted a joint request from prosecutors and defense attorneys to postpone the trial by two weeks, moving its scheduled start date to June 14, 2027.

He also scheduled a Dec. 17 hearing to consider defense motions seeking dismissal of the prosecution.

Those proceedings will now fall under the responsibility of whichever judge receives the case through the court’s random assignment system. The new judge will inherit a prosecution involving extensive allegations of international drug trafficking, political repression and the mistreatment of American citizens detained in Venezuela.

Although Hellerstein’s death does not automatically invalidate his previous rulings or require a postponement of the trial, his successor will have to become familiar with the extensive case record before deciding whether to maintain the existing schedule.

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