Harlem real estate developer Gerald Migdol, the alleged co-conspirator and key witness in the Southern District of New York’s case against former New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, has died, assistant U.S. attorney Hagan Scotten informed a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a letter Thursday.

The panel, composed of Circuit Judges Amalya Kearse, Dennis Jacobs and Steven Menashi, has been weighing the future of Benjamin’s bribery and fraud charges since oral arguments in May, and Scotten wrote that those deliberations should continue.