Judge who presided over terrorism trials dies of coronavirus

NEW YORK (AP) — Kevin Duffy, a longtime judge who presided over three major New York terrorism trials in the 1990s, has died of the coronavirus. He was 87.

Duffy died Wednesday in Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he lived, according to Edward Friedland, the district executive at Manhattan federal court. Duffy retired in 2016.

Duffy, appointed to the bench in 1972 by President Richard Nixon, made relatively quick work of the trial of four men who conspired to bomb the World Trade Center in February 1993, starting it only five months after the attack that killed six people and injured hundreds more.

He also presided over two trials of the bombing's mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, who is serving a life sentence after his conviction in the trade center attack and a plot to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Far East.

All three trials resulted in convictions, and Duffy sent the defendants to prison for the rest of their lives, bemoaning the change terrorism had brought to the United States.

"Prior to February 26th, 1993, this country was a much freer place," Duffy told four men convicted at the 1993 trial. “Now we have guards. Now we have an identification-card mentality. It's not quite as free."

After one defendant complained that prison guards had not given him prayer beads and rugs, Duffy replied: "You're a convicted felon. ... You're not some guy on vacation.”

"You talk about the Koran," he told another defendant. “You have shamed it. ... You violated the laws not only of man, but God.”

At a sentencing years later, he called Yousef, the 1993 bombing's mastermind, an "apostle of evil.''

Besides the terror trials, Duffy had other high-profile proceedings, including the trial of Paul Castellano, who allegedly headed the Gambino organized crime...