Manhattan Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 9/11 veteran, has died

Alvin K. Hellerstein, the federal judge in Manhattan who managed cases involving President Donald Trump and former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, has died. He was 92 years old. Edward Friedland, the executive director of the federal courts in the Southern District of New York, confirmed the news on Wednesday. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Hellerstein was active in the court system until recently. Two weeks before his death, he led a hearing in Manhattan related to the trial against Maduro. Maduro faces charges of conspiracy for narco-terror and was captured in a surprise operation earlier this year. A court spokesperson stated that the Maduro case has now been assigned to Judge Analisa Torres.

The judge served for nearly three decades. President Bill Clinton appointed him to the federal bench in 1998. He worked as a district judge until 2011, when he became a senior judge. Before his judicial career, Hellerstein served in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps and worked as a litigator in Manhattan.

His most enduring work involved the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He presided over dozens of lawsuits for negligence deaths, injuries, and property damage. That legal process lasted for twenty years. Attorneys noted that Hellerstein showed deep empathy for the victims and their families. He spent hours in his chambers with them and rejected what he viewed as insufficient settlement offers.

His approach to the 9/11 cases drew mixed reactions. In 2008, some parties expressed dismay when he ended an initiative to force the City of New York to continue searching for human remains in debris moved from Ground Zero to a landfill in Staten Island. He was also known for a strict courtroom discipline and an independent character.

Hellerstein required people in his courtroom to wear masks for more than two years after the pandemic. He maintained this rule long after other judges dropped it. His recent decisions included rulings on Trump’s legal battles. In August, he rejected another attempt by Trump to vacate his conviction in the case involving payments to silence witnesses.

That August ruling was the third time Hellerstein denied Trump’s requests to transfer the case to federal jurisdiction or dismiss it based on presidential immunity. The first denial came after Trump’s indictment in March 2023. The second followed the conviction in May 2024 and a subsequent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered him to reconsider his previous decision, noting he had overlooked important questions, but the judges said they expressed no opinion on how he should rule.

In 2020, Hellerstein ordered the release of Michael Cohen, a former lawyer and close associate of Trump. The Department of Justice had revoked Cohen’s home confinement to hinder his efforts to publish a book and speak to media. Hellerstein ruled that the government’s measure was retaliatory and violated the First Amendment. In 2015, he ordered a New York cable company to pay a woman from Texas $229,500 after she was flooded with 153 automated robocalls.