Image: A courtroom sketch shows U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein at the Manhattan federal court in June 2023. Jane Rosenberg/Reuters.
When I visited the NPR website over the weekend to learn about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s rcent court hearing, NPR displayed a website ‘pop-up’ reminding me that the reporting on their radio stations and websites is performed by “real humans”.
I found that reassuring. There’s so much going on these days that doesn’t involve real humans.
As many people believe, President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by the U.S. military in early January and brought to New York to be tried on charges of narco-terrorism, which sounds pretty serious to me. Much worse than simple “terrorism”.
I don’t understand why they had to arrest his wife? In my experience, men who do naughty things often don’t even tell their wives about their activities. If they want to stay married. (I usually didn’t tell Darlene about my naughty activities, but our marriage fell apart nevertheless.)
The real humans at NPR are reinforcing our beliefs about President Maduro and his wife.
I have no doubt that President Maduro and First Lady Flores appeared at a pretrial hearing on March 26, because I came across an illustration online, of the 92-year-old judge who is hearing the case.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein. Shown above.
Reportedly, a rather short and unassuming man, even compared to other 92-year-old judges. But apparently, he knows how to use a laptop, based on the drawing.
I don’t have an illustration of President Maduro or First Lady Flores, so the picture of Judge Hellerstein is going to have to cover a lot of bases.
Something I didn’t know: that Nicolás Maduro once worked as a bus driver. I bet, right about now, he wishes he’d held onto that job.
Probably a sizable percentage of Venezuelans wish the same. Maduro was widely considered to have been leading an authoritarian government, characterized by electoral fraud, human rights abuses, corruption, censorship and severe economic hardship. Big protest demonstrations, by thousands of real humans, were one prominent result.
Which makes Venezuela sound more like the U.S. with each passing day.
I couldn’t find a photo of any protest marches held in Venezuela, but they probably resembled this one, from last Saturday’s “No Kings” protest in Denver.
In 2024, Maduro was “re-elected for a third term”, although evidence indicates that he actually lost that election by a wide margin. Of course, the losers always complain about an election getting stolen. Or so I hear.
Be that as it may, the pretrial hearing last week dealt with something less frightening than narco-terrorism, which we will presumably hear more about as the case drags on.
Maduro’s defense team was claiming that, under Venezuelan law, the government of Venezuela is obligated to pay the legal expenses of the President and the First Lady, and apparently Venezuela’s current government says it intends to do just that. But Venezuela is under U.S. sanctions, so the U.S. government would need to issue a license to allow the government in Caracas to pay the Maduro’s attorneys and legal fees.
We can easily guess how the Department of Justice feels about issuing such a license. And we would be right.
So Maduro’s legal team says the U.S. government is interfering with Maduro’s Sixth Amendment right to choose his own attorney. They’re asking the judge to dismiss this case, or to allow them to withdraw as Maduro’s legal team.
Really? The Sixth Amendment? Not an amendment that I hear much about. Second Amendment, yes. First Amendment, sure thing. But no one talks much about the Sixth Amendment.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
There’s no way this trial is going to be speedy, if I know anything at all about the American legal system. And obviously, Maduro is not being tried in the State and district where the crime is alleged to have been committed. I’m not sure, myself, what exactly the crime is? But I bet it was committed in Venezuela. Or maybe Florida.
Lots of crimes are committed in Florida. Or so I hear.
The U.S. government doesn’t recognize Maduro as the legitimate President of Venezuela, so naturally they don’t want Venezuela paying his legal fees.
The question is, does that argument make sense to Judge Hellerstein?
My personal opinion doesn’t matter in this situation. (Possibly, it doesn’t matter in any situation.) But if I were Judge Hellerstein, my opinion would matter. In fact, it might be the only opinion that matters.
Makes me sort of wish I had become a judge instead of a journalist.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.