Analisa Torres, an Obama-appointed judge, takes over Nicolás Maduro's case following death of Judge Alvin Hellerstein at age 92
Hellerstein, who oversaw litigation related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died of natural causes after nearly three decades in office.
Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores in a file photo
The criminal proceedings against Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in New York has a new judge. The case was reassigned Wednesday to Analisa Torres, a judge in the Southern District of New York, just a few hours after the death of Alvin K. Hellerstein, the judge who had presided over the case since the first indictment was filed against the former Venezuelan dictator.
Torres' reassignment was recorded in the court records as part of the standard procedure for cases involving judges who leave office due to retirement or death. Hellerstein, who presided over litigation related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died of natural causes after nearly three decades on the bench.
Who is Analisa Torres?
Torres, born in New York in 1959, was appointed to the federal bench in 2013 by then-Democratic President Barack Obama.
According to her resume, she comes from a family of judges of Puerto Rican descent, graduated with honors from Harvard and earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School. Before joining the federal court, she worked at private law firms and spent nearly a decade as a judge on the New York State Supreme Court, having previously served in the city's civil and criminal courts.
During her tenure in the Southern District, she presided over high-profile cases. In 2023, she issued a landmark ruling in the Securities and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against Ripple Labs, finding that certain sales of the cryptocurrency XRP did not constitute securities offerings. More recently, in October 2025, she dismissed a $1 billion lawsuit filed by the families of victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on the U.N. for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), ruling that the agency enjoys immunity in U.S. courts. That decision contrasted with a letter sent in April by the Department of Justice, which argued that UNRWA was not immune in that litigation, and drew criticism from conservative circles for, in their view, favoring an agency that colludes with Islamic terrorism.
This precedent is noteworthy because immunity will, in fact, be one of the central issues in the case she is now taking over. Although these are radically different legal concepts, the defense team for Maduro and his wife, Flores, requested that the charges be dismissed on the grounds that the former dictator enjoys sovereign immunity as head of state — a position the DOJ disputes.
Maduro has been labeled an "illegitimate" leader by both Republican and Democratic administrations due to the electoral fraud he committed during his time in office, most recently in 2024, when the opposition, led by María Corina Machado, was able to demonstrate — through scanned election records reviewed by independent organizations — that she had defeated the former dictator by a wide margin.
Torres, meanwhile, receives the case file with a schedule already set. At the last hearing held this month Hellerstein scheduled the trial to begin on June 14, 2027 — two weeks later than originally planned — at the request of the prosecution. It was also established that the next deadline for filing motions would be Nov. 9, that arguments on the motions in the drug trafficking case would be heard on Dec. 17, and that the hearing on sovereign immunity would take place on Jan. 5.
The final pretrial conference was set for June 8. Maduro also waived the time limits set forth in the Speedy Trial Act until the start of the proceedings. It remains unclear whether the new judge will uphold those dates or delay each of the pending matters.
At that same hearing, Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to the new charges of conspiracy to torture U.S. citizens and political opponents. "These are false accusations against me," stated Maduro, who unsuccessfully attempted to make a political statement before Judge Hellerstein. Flores, for her part, claimed to be "completely innocent." People who attended the hearing described them as visibly thinner, and Flores as looking much more dejected than at previous hearings.
Hellerstein, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1998, had been in charge of the case since March 2020, when the U.S. justice system filed the original indictment for narco-terrorism, and remained in charge after Maduro's arrest and transfer to New York in January of this year. In one of his most recent rulings in the Venezuelan case, he denied Flores' request for release pending trial. "Prison is not a pleasant place," he said at the time. "But these are serious charges."
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