At 92, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein works out twice a week and attends classical music concerts, maintaining a level of physical fitness and an active social life admired by the lawyers who appear before him in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where he has presided for 27 years.
But in court, Judge Hellerstein has also fallen asleep in the midst of a trial where the defendants faced decades in prison.
As a former managing director of JPMorgan Chase stood trial for fraud last year, Judge Hellerstein at times appeared to drift in and out of slumber, according to two people who observed the case and saw the judge every day. Judge Hellerstein’s courtroom deputy and clerks roused him by writing him a note or refilling his mug of water.
His intermittent dozing occurred amid a shortened daily trial schedule. The day’s proceedings would often begin at 10:30 in the morning and end at around 4 in the afternoon, with a lunch break that could last two hours.
Now, Judge Hellerstein’s alertness will be in full view as he presides over the case of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader who was captured in one of the most audacious displays of American power in recent decades and stands accused of leading a narco-state.
The case presents a high-profile capstone to a long and illustrious career, but it will also test his endurance, temperament and legal acumen. It is bound to feature an array of thorny, novel legal issues, with rulings almost guaranteed to be reviewed by higher courts, and it could be more than a year before Mr. Maduro goes on trial, if at all. Should Judge Hellerstein no longer be able to oversee the case, it would be transferred to a different judge in Manhattan, a process that could create further delays.
Since Mr. Maduro’s capture, a number of articles, including in The New York Times’s opinion pages, have raised questions about his fitness. Judge Hellerstein declined to comment for this article.
There is no age limit for federal judges, who are appointed to lifetime tenures. The average age of sitting federal judges was 68 in 2024. Out of more than 1,100 Federal District Court judges across the country, 37, or roughly 3 percent, are in their 90s, while around 13 percent are in their 80s, according to data from the Federal Judicial Center, an agency that conducts research and provides education for the federal courts.
Judge Hellerstein isn’t the oldest federal judge in New York; that would be Judge I. Leo Glasser, 101, in Brooklyn.
According to a 2024 book by political science researchers, as judges age, they take longer to write their opinions, rely more on their clerks to draft them and use less sophisticated language in their written work.
“They’re moving slower,” Ryan C. Black, a professor of political science at Michigan State University and a co-author of the book, said. “Judges are not magically inoculated from the effects of aging.”
Judge Hellerstein, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1998, is known as a personable jurist who draws on his lived experience. He is an observant Orthodox Jew from the Bronx who has said he schedules sentencings on Fridays so that he can reflect on his decisions over the Sabbath.
Perhaps the best-known case he oversaw was the sprawling civil litigation arising from the 9/11 attacks. For Judge Hellerstein, the case was deeply personal: As a lawyer in private practice, he represented the firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 of its employees on 9/11, and often worked with its executives.
Defense lawyers and former prosecutors describe him as engaged, empathetic and pragmatic, with a tendency to issue rulings that are imbued with a common-sense understanding of the law. He often questions witnesses himself in an effort to move the proceedings along quickly, and asks jurors whether they are confused by the evidence being introduced.
Lawrence S. Lustberg, a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer who has appeared before Judge Hellerstein many times, said oral arguments with the judge were more conversational than “by the book.”
At times, his informality has gotten him in trouble. An appeals court chided Judge Hellerstein after he called a prosecutor, off the record, about a case involving a wealthy real estate developer who had pleaded guilty.
Shira A. Scheindlin, a retired federal judge and former colleague of Judge Hellerstein in federal court in Manhattan, described him as an independent-minded jurist with a deep respect for the law, who was not afraid of being overruled by a higher court.
But Ms. Scheindlin, who stepped down in 2016 at the age of 69, said the question of a judge’s age is “a fair issue for people to be concerned about.”
“Any person who’s 94 is probably not as strong and swift as they were when they were 74, or 54,” Ms. Scheindlin said, referring to Judge Hellerstein’s age two years from now.
Though cases are sometimes reassigned away from judges based on their physical fitness, there is no uniform process for removing a judge from the bench, said Francis X. Shen, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies the aging federal judiciary.
Rather, Professor Shen said, such cases are handled informally by the chief judge of a given federal district, who may gently encourage the judge in question to retire. The process has occasionally turned ugly. In 2023, Pauline Newman, a 96-year-old federal circuit court judge in Washington, was suspended by her colleagues as she faced questions over her mental fitness. Judge Newman has sued over her suspension.
So far, there is no indication that Judge Hellerstein is not able to handle Mr. Maduro’s case. He calmly oversaw the first and only hearing to date on Jan. 5. He has already ruled on a dispute surrounding Mr. Maduro’s defense counsel, removing from the case a lawyer whom Mr. Maduro did not hire.
But there is a long road ahead. The district judge in any case, especially a case of the magnitude of Mr. Maduro’s, is responsible for considering any and all legal issues that arise, building a foundation that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, would have to consider when those issues reach them.
Mr. Lustberg represented the American Civil Liberties Union in the 2000s and 2010s in a lawsuit concerning the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of videotapes that depicted torture. In that case, Judge Hellerstein ordered the government to release photos that showed the abuse of prisoners in American custody in Iraq.
“I think there’s a tremendous benefit to experience,” Mr. Lustberg said. “There’s very little that’s going to happen before Judge Hellerstein that he hasn’t seen before.”
Given the numerous novel legal issues involved in Mr. Maduro’s case — questions of his immunity from prosecution as a head of state and his seizure on foreign soil, among others — how Judge Hellerstein builds that foundation will be particularly crucial.
So far, he is showing that he is not intimidated. As Mr. Maduro loudly proclaimed his innocence earlier this month, Judge Hellerstein responded just as he had to the thousands of other defendants who have appeared in his courtroom.
“I only want to know one thing,” Judge Hellerstein said. “Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”
Benjamin Weiser and Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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