By Basil Katz and Joseph Ax 

Oct 31 (Reuters) - For the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal court in Manhattan has put criminal cases on hold, as officials struggle to resume operations in the devastating wake of Hurricane Sandy.

With the courthouse at 500 Pearl Street still without power Wednesday afternoon, Chief Judge Loretta Preska issued an order extending deadlines in pending criminal cases until Monday and deadlines for grand jury action until Nov. 12.

Federal law permits a judge to extend the time for certain criminal filings if the clerk's office is unavailable for filing or for good cause. In addition, federal speedy trial law, which normally requires a grand jury indictment within 30 days of arrest, allows a judge to extend the deadline if he or she finds the "ends of justice" outweigh the defendant's interest.

Also on Wednesday afternoon, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order waiving filing deadlines for a wide range of criminal and civil state cases because of the storm, including speedy trial requirements.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which destroyed the World Trade Center and killed nearly 3,000 people, left the courthouse closed for a week. At that time, a similar order to Preska's was issued extending deadlines in criminal cases.

In her unlit offices on the courthouse's 22nd floor, Preska, before issuing the order, spoke to Reuters about the challenges of getting court operations back up and running, as a skeleton crew of courthouse personnel huffed up and down stairs in the darkened building.

"I actually came in thinking I could do some work," said Preska, who was forced to move to a hotel after the hurricane knocked out power to her home in downtown Manhattan.

Preska presides over the U.S. District Court for the Southern District, which consists of 59 judges and four courthouses, including the one in downtown Manhattan. The Pearl Street location, housing the district court and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has been closed since Monday and will remain so through the end of the week.

Edward Friedland, the district executive, said in an interview that newly arrested defendants needing to see a judge would appear before a magistrate at the courthouse in White Plains, which, along with the courthouses in Middletown and Poughkeepsie, was operating normally Wednesday.

On Wednesday, auxiliary generators provided emergency lighting and enough electricity to operate three of the more than a dozen elevators at 500 Pearl Street, where roughly 40 judges and magistrates sit.

GETTING CREATIVE

While most of the courthouse remained dark, certain proceedings had to take place, forcing judges and lawyers to get creative.

In an unlit courtroom on the 14th floor, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon held a telephone hearing on the bail conditions of Paul Ceglia, the entrepreneur charged with engineering a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

Ceglia was in Buffalo, where he had been arrested on charges originating in New York. With the phone lines in the Manhattan courthouse down, a prosecutor in McMahon's court used a cell phone so Ceglia and court officials in Buffalo could hear the proceeding.

"We need belts and suspenders," McMahon joked, as prosecutors and Ceglia's public defender, David Patton, the chief attorney of the Federal Defenders of New York, huddled around the judge's bench to speak into the phone.

"I'm in a very dark room with a very small light bulb over me," McMahon said. "We have a bunch of lawyers gathered today under adverse circumstances but we need to have this hearing and we need to have it today."

Patton argued to the judge that Ceglia posed no danger and should be granted bail. McMahon set Ceglia's bail at $250,000 and ordered home detention with electronic monitoring within 15 miles of his house near Rochester.

As the hearing ended, McMahon said, "We're having horrendous phone difficulties here in lower Manhattan. It's really quite extraordinary, there hasn't been anything like it, or at least not since 9/11."

Patton declined to comment after the hearing.

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