NEW YORK– Alvin K. Hellerstein, a Manhattan federal judge who presided over cases involving President Donald Trump, former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the September 11 attacks during nearly three decades on the bench, has died. He was 92 years old.
Hellerstein died Wednesday, according to Edward Friedland, district director of the federal courts for the Southern District of New York. No cause of death was immediately provided.
Just two weeks ago, Hellerstein presided over a hearing in Manhattan in the ongoing narcoterrorist plot prosecution of Maduro, who was captured earlier this year in a surprise raid.
President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, appointed Hellerstein to the federal bench in 1998. He served as a district judge until he rose to senior status in 2011. Before that, Hellerstein served in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and was a trial lawyer in Manhattan.
Following the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Hellerstein presided over dozens of wrongful trials for deaths, injuries and property damage – a two-decade effort that shaped his legacy on the bench.
Some of the judge’s former clients died in the attack, and lawyers say he showed great empathy toward the victims and their families, meeting with them for hours in his office and rejecting what he considered poor settlement offers.
Others were dismayed when, in 2008, Hellerstein ended his effort to force the New York City government to continue searching for human remains in debris moved from Ground Zero to a Staten Island landfill.
Hellerstein, known for his independent side and strict courtroom discipline, insisted that spectators wear pandemic-era masks for more than two years after other judges stopped the practice.
In August, in one of his last major rulings, Hellerstein again rejected Trump’s efforts to expunge his hush money conviction, rejecting the president’s attempt to move the state’s lawsuit to federal court and have it dismissed on grounds of presidential immunity.
It was the third time Hellerstein refused Trump’s requests to move the case. The first time was after Trump’s indictment in March 2023; the second follows Trump’s conviction in May 2024 and a subsequent ruling by the United States Supreme Court that presidents and former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts.
Hellerstein’s latest ruling against Trump came after an appeals court ordered him to reconsider his earlier ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that Hellerstein erred by failing to consider “relevant material issues” regarding the president’s request. However, the appeals court judges said they “express no opinion” on how Hellerstein should rule.
In 2020, Hellerstein ordered the release from prison of former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen after the Justice Department revoked his house arrest to thwart his efforts to publish a book or speak to the media. The government’s action, he ruled, was retaliatory and a violation of the First Amendment.
In 2015, Hellerstein made headlines when he ordered a New York City cable company to pay a Texas woman $229,500 for flooding her phone with 153 robocalls.
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