Follow-Up: Maduro Defense Files a Separate Venue Motion to Dismiss the Torture-Conspiracy Count, Saying Prosecutors Manufactured Venue in Manhattan
The defense team for former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores filed a separate motion (Docket No. 364) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on November 9, asking the court to dismiss Count Two of the Fifth Superseding Indictment, the conspiracy-to-commit-torture count, for lack of venue, or in the alternative for production of the grand jury minutes. It is a different legal track from the sovereign-immunity motions filed the same day: those seek dismissal of all charges, while this motion targets only the torture count, on the ground that the case is in the wrong district.
The defense says that when the grand jury returned the indictment on October 6, 2026, Count Two did not previously exist, and both defendants were already detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, in the Eastern District of New York; neither had been arrested in, or first brought to, the Southern District for that count. The government then manufactured venue, the motion argues: on October 8 Flores was transported to the Southern District for a bond hearing, the indictment was unsealed, and she was gratuitously arrested while already in custody; on October 15 Maduro was similarly arrested in the Southern District courthouse at his arraignment. The government, the defense wrote, cannot opportunistically create venue in any district of its choosing simply by executing an otherwise unnecessary arrest warrant there.
The motion rests on Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3) and 18 U.S.C. § 3238, under which venue for offences committed abroad lies in the district where the offender is arrested or first brought. If the charge is not dismissed, the defense asks in the alternative that the prosecution produce the grand jury minutes on the venue presentation, or at minimum that Judge Analisa Torres review them in camera. The defense also states, in a footnote, that the court may decide immunity first and reserve the venue question for the second round of pretrial motions, to which it does not object.
Trial in the case is currently set for June 14, 2027. The immunity motions filed the same day (Docket Nos. 358 and 361) carry a prosecution response deadline of November 30 and a hearing on December 17; no separate response deadline for the venue motion has been reported publicly.
(Source: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York)
Source: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
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- 2026-11-09Follow-Up: Maduro Defense Files a Separate Venue Motion to Dismiss the Torture-Conspiracy Count, Saying Prosecutors Manufactured Venue in ManhattanThis story
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