Maduro Case Judge Is Old. Whether He’s Fit Is a Different Issue

The 92-year-old New York judge overseeing the Nicolás Maduro prosecution now has the weight of representing nonagenarians on him. His supposedly frail shoulders may yet hold up.

“He is sharper than many younger judges,” said Michael Hausfeld, an attorney who appeared before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Wednesday, some 48 hours after the former Venezuelan president’s Jan. 5 court appearance. He said the judge gave a “master class” in ruling from the bench. (Hellerstein ruled in Hausfeld’s favor that day, let’s note, but Hausfeld—a comparatively young 80—said he’s speaking “totally objectively.”)

Hellerstein is presiding over the country’s most high-profile criminal case in the post-Biden era, when age is a political vulnerability and “OK, Boomer” is meant as an insult. Opinion pages in The New York Times and National Review—not usually ideological allies—have already said he should give it up because the Maduro case could take years. The judge allegedly dozed off at Charlie Javice’s trial, though whether that’s because white-collar cases can get boring, or because he’s old, is a matter of speculation.

“Age is a clue but is not dispositive of anyone’s cognitive abilities,” said Francis X. Shen, a professor of neuroscience and law at the University of Minnesota and Harvard.

In general, however, people gain “crystallized intelligence, i.e., wisdom” while losing “fluid intelligence, i.e., the ability to process information quickly,” as they age, explained Shen, who has studied the impacts of aging on judges. “This is why a 16-year-old should help you with the iPhone, but a 66-year-old should help you with retirement planning.”

Hellerstein, of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, isn’t exactly devoid of similarly-aged peers on the bench. Remarkably, there are at least 157 federal judges who are 85 or older—and at least 63 of them are 90 or older, according to updated data from the Federal Judicial Center analyzed by my colleague Andrew Wallender. (All but two of the over-90 set, including Hellerstein, are on senior status.)

Interactive graphic: Most federal judges were born in the 1960s

The problem with the aging US bench, Shen said, is the lack of a systematized check on a judge’s fitness. That’s left commentators and the public to speculate based on “informal tidbits, anecdotes,” he said.

After all, they have life tenures—bucking the mandatory retirement ages that states have in place—and largely are left to self-police any signs of decline.

The most significant recent controversy surrounding an older judge came in 2023, when now-98-year-old Judge Pauline Newman’s fellow judges on the Federal Circuit suspended her from new case assignments for refusing to cooperate with a probe into her fitness. She hasn’t gone down without a fight: publicly defending her abilities and challenging her suspension in court.

Other older judges have started speaking up. Brooklyn district court Judge Frederic Block, 91, told me last year that the bigger problem is younger judges. “They don’t have the background,” he said.

There are some good reasons for Hellerstein to have the Maduro case. It’s before him now because he was already overseeing the case of a Maduro co-defendant, ex-Venezuelan spy chief Hugo Carvajal, who pleaded guilty last year and is awaiting sentencing.

He is well-versed in complex and high-profile cases, with ex-prosecutor Elie Honig noting in New York Magazine the judge’s “Forrest Gump-like knack for historical adjacency.” (Under Hellerstein’s belt are cases overseeing 9/11-related lawsuits, civil litigation against Harvey Weinstein, and, currently, a review of President Donald Trump’s Stormy Daniels-linked conviction.)

Which is not to say the age-related concerns can be swept aside. Or that he’ll even keep the case—he can voluntarily give it up, or Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain can ask him to. (Hellerstein and Swain didn’t respond to questions.)

A trio of political professors found in a 2023 study that older judges lift more from lawyers’ briefs in their opinions and take longer to do their work. One of the authors, Michigan State University political science professor Ryan C. Black, told me that judges have a “blind spot” for their own decline.

And suffice to say the actuarial tables aren’t in Hellerstein’s favor.

But several attorneys who practice before him said he’s capable. They pegged him with a quality that might be linked to age, though not quite to cognitive decline: crankiness.

“He’s an older man who does things his way,” said Kenneth J. Montgomery, a criminal defense attorney.

Still, the novelty of the Maduro case might make even a 92-year-old, three-decade judge feel young.

“Anybody who’s been on the bench as long as he has may get a little cranky at times at cases that they perceive to be run of the mill,” said New York County Lawyers Association President Richard Swanson. “But nobody has heard or seen a case quite like this before.”