Judge Sets June 2027 Trial for Nicolás Maduro as Ex-Venezuelan Leader Pleads Not Guilty in New York

A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday set June 1, 2027, as the date for the criminal trial of Nicolás Maduro, the ousted Venezuelan president now facing U.S. drug-trafficking and narco-terrorism charges, capping a court hearing that laid out a lengthy road to reckoning for a man who ruled Venezuela for more than a decade.

Maduro, 62, and his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who fixed the trial date and set a schedule for the pretrial fight to come. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty. "I am a decent man," Maduro told the court in an earlier appearance, rejecting the accusations that Washington has pressed against him for years.

Prosecutors say Maduro sat atop a state that functioned as a criminal enterprise, and he faces four felony counts, including narco-terrorism conspiracy and conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. If convicted on the most serious charges, he could be sentenced to life in prison. Flores, a longtime political power in her own right, is charged alongside her husband.

Defense lawyers signaled they will not wait for a jury to make their case. They told Hellerstein they intend to move to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Maduro is immune from prosecution as the former head of a sovereign state, an argument that could test unsettled questions of international and constitutional law. The judge set a September 2 deadline for that first round of dismissal motions and scheduled a November 17 hearing for oral arguments, meaning the immunity dispute is likely to consume much of the coming months before any trial can begin.

The proceeding marks an extraordinary chapter in the long confrontation between Washington and Caracas. U.S. officials had sought Maduro for years under an indictment first unsealed in 2020, and his transfer to a New York courtroom followed a sweeping American military campaign against alleged drug-trafficking networks tied to Venezuela. The image of a sitting-era head of state seated at a defense table in a downtown Manhattan courthouse underscored how far the standoff has escalated.

Outside the courthouse, the case has drawn intense attention from Venezuelan exiles and human-rights advocates who have long accused Maduro of dismantling democratic institutions, jailing opponents and presiding over an economic collapse that pushed millions to flee the country. His supporters, meanwhile, cast the prosecution as a politically driven act of aggression by the United States. With the trial more than a year away and a thicket of pretrial motions ahead, the legal battle over Maduro's fate is only beginning.