Unorthodox approach will fit in.....

92-year-old judge handling Maduro case ‘doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about him’

Lawyers who have practiced before the Clinton appointee say he’s known to operate a bit differently.

By Josh Gerstein and Erica Orden

The extraordinary criminal case against deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is headed before a 92-year-old judge with a stubborn streak and an often unorthodox approach to running his courtroom.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee based in Manhattan, is overseeing Maduro’s arraignment Monday and is likely to preside over any trial of the ousted president.

“He tries very hard to do the right thing. [He] just has his own sense of what that is,” one former federal prosecutor said.

“He’s just old and old-school and does things his own way and doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about him,” said another former federal prosecutor, who — like most lawyers interviewed for this story — was granted anonymity to speak candidly about a judge they may appear before in the future.

Hellerstein has ruled against President Donald Trump or his administration in other high-profile cases, including the charges involving alleged hush money payments to pornstar Stormy Daniels. Hellerstein twice rejected Trump’s bids to move the case to federal court.

Just two months ago, an appeals court overturned one of those rulings.

Hellerstein also issued a sweeping order last May blocking the Trump administration from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act with little, if any, due process. The ruling essentially halted such deportations in the Southern District of New York, where the judge sits.

While Hellerstein’s age is certain to raise eyebrows, lawyers interviewed for this story raised no doubts about his fitness. However, some said he has long exhibited an independence bordering on stubbornness.

Hellerstein sometimes departs from typical court protocol, including by calling up prosecutors directly on the phone. “He called me when I was a junior prosecutor, [saying] ‘I got this application. I have a couple of questions about it,’” one ex-prosecutor said.

Hellerstein can be aggressive about managing — perhaps even micromanaging — the conduct of attorneys in his courtroom, lawyers who’ve practiced before him say. And he insists on attorneys maintaining a brisk pace.

“He loves trials. He can grow impatient with testimony,” said Carrie Cohen, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. “He likes to move things along. He is very conscious of the jury becoming bored.”

Attorneys say Hellerstein tends to sentence government cooperators more harshly than other judges and can sometimes be indecisive about criminal sentences, mulling them over at length and even revising them after he’s handed them down.

Hellerstein, a Bronx native and graduate of Columbia Law School, is also known to have a particular affinity for all matters related to his home borough.

“Any event or activity in the Bronx, he is all over,” said one attorney who has appeared before him.

The Maduro case is before Hellerstein because he was assigned to an indictment of a Maduro co-defendant back in 2011, almost a decade and a half ago. Maduro himself was first added to that criminal case in 2020, and prosecutors obtained a superseding indictment against him that was unsealed Saturday.

A verdict on the charges against Maduro could take a long time, and Hellerstein has some experience with prominent cases that can drag on for years. He wound up presiding over more than 10,000 lawsuits filed by responders and families of responders to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

In 2010, the judge irked lawyers on both sides of those disputes by rejecting a proposed settlement that would have paid out between $575 million and $657 million. Following his objection, the value of the settlement fund was increased by about $50 million and Hellerstein approved it.

Not every attention-grabbing case Hellerstein has overseen has involved grave matters. Lawyers say he took particular delight in the appearance of hotel heir and reality TV star Paris Hilton in his courtroom in 2012 during a legal fight over royalties for a lingerie line she was to design. As he has done in many other cases, Hellerstein pressed both sides to settle, which they did about a month later.

The closest recent analogue for the Maduro prosecution is the trial of former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, who was seized by U.S. troops in 1990.

Over 20 months passed between Noriega’s arrest and the opening of his jury trial. The trial, which lasted seven months, led to his conviction on eight drug and racketeering charges. He was initially sentenced to 40 years in prison, although that figure was later cut to 30 and then 17 years.