The comment section is going to love this one. Alvin K. Hellerstein, the Manhattan federal judge who was presiding over the narco-terrorism prosecution of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro just two weeks ago, died Wednesday at the age of 92. Edward Friedland, district executive for the Southern District of New York federal courts, confirmed the death. No cause was immediately provided.
Who appointed him? Bill Clinton.
Hellerstein spent nearly three decades on the federal bench, and his docket reads like a greatest-hits album of American legal history. He oversaw dozens of wrongful death, injury, and property damage lawsuits stemming from the 9/11 attacks, a two-decade effort that lawyers say was defined by his deep empathy for victims and their families. He met with them for hours in his chambers and refused what he considered low-ball settlement offers on their behalf.
He also kept his courtroom mask mandate going for more than two years after other judges quietly dropped theirs, because of course he did. The man had an independent streak a mile wide and apparently a personal supply of surgical masks to match. Those who practiced before him described his courtroom discipline as strict, his personality as quirky, and his rulings as anything but predictable. the Hellerstein federal court career covered everything from cable company robocall fines to presidential immunity fights.
President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, appointed Hellerstein to the bench in 1998. He served as a district judge until moving to senior status in 2011, having previously served in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and worked as a Manhattan litigator. On the Maduro front, he presided over a hearing in the ongoing narco-terrorism conspiracy case against the captured former Venezuelan strongman just two weeks before his death, showing that right up to the end he was handling some of the heaviest cases on the docket.
Hellerstein also tangled repeatedly with President Trump’s legal team over the hush money conviction. He rejected Trump’s efforts to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds, doing so three separate times. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him to reconsider once, saying he had failed to weigh certain issues, but the appeals court explicitly said it was expressing no view on how he should ultimately rule. Hellerstein ruled against Trump again anyway. In 2020, he ordered Michael Cohen released from home confinement after finding that the Justice Department’s decision to revoke it, apparently to stop Cohen from writing a book or talking to reporters, was retaliatory and violated the First Amendment.
A replacement judge will be chosen for his remaining cases, including the Maduro prosecution. Hellerstein leaves behind a legacy shaped by the victims of September 11, a few well-timed mask mandates, and enough high-profile rulings to keep law school professors busy for years. Whatever you thought of his decisions, the man showed up and did the work well into his nineties, and that counts for something.
