Retired Clark County district judge Jackie Glass, who sentenced former football star O.J. Simpson to decades behind bars in 2008 and went on to host the syndicated courtroom series “Swift Justice,” died August 28, 2026, in Las Vegas. She was 70.
Her daughter Rachel Wolfson, a comedian and stuntwoman, announced the death on Facebook alongside a photograph of the two of them. “Rip my rock, I don’t know how I’ll do this life without you,” Wolfson wrote, posting several more images of herself with her mother in the hours that followed.
Glass died on Friday afternoon after suffering heart failure during a mediation, her husband, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. She had been working as a mediator since leaving the bench and had planned to keep at it for about five more years. The family arranged a private funeral, but word spread and 250 people turned up for the Monday, August 31 service. Her husband survives her, as do two daughters, Rachel and Rebecca Wolfson, a sitting Las Vegas Municipal Court judge.
The Sentencing That Shaped Her Public Image
To much of the country, she was the judge who locked up Simpson. At a hearing on December 5, 2008, inside the Clark County Regional Justice Center, the armed robbery and kidnapping counts drew from Glass a term of up to 33 years, with parole possible after nine. A jury convicted him on all 12 counts. Those charges grew out of a September 13, 2007, confrontation at the Palace Station casino, where Simpson and five other men had burst into a hotel room in an attempt to take sports memorabilia he said was his.
Simpson’s apology in court did not move her. “I have to tell you now, it was much more than stupidity,” she said from the bench, brushing aside the defense argument that the episode amounted to no more than poor judgment. She then returned to a question she had put to Simpson at a bail hearing months earlier and answered it: “Earlier in this case, at a bail hearing, I asked, I said, to Mr. Simpson, I didn’t know if he was arrogant or ignorant or both. And during the trial and through this proceeding, I got this answer, and it was both.” He left the courtroom in shackles.
That was where the phrase originated. Simpson breached the terms of his release in January 2008 by mentioning a co-defendant in a message to his bail bondsman, and Glass doubled his bail to $250,000 and rebuked him in open court. “I don’t know if it’s just arrogance. I don’t know if it’s ignorance,” she told him. “But you’ve been locked up at the Clark County Detention Center since Friday because of arrogance or ignorance — or both.” There was, she added, “no get-out-of-jail-free card today.”
Simpson was granted parole on July 20, 2017, and released on October 1. He died on April 10, 2024, at 76. His family said only that he had “succumbed to his battle with cancer”; his lawyer later confirmed it was metastatic prostate cancer.
From Broadcast News to the Bench
Glass came to Las Vegas in 1978, carrying a journalism degree from the University of Georgia, and got a reporting job at KORK-AM, 920. KTNV-TV, Channel 13, later hired her to cover crime and anchor newscasts, and that beat pointed her toward the law.
She finished her law degree at the University of San Diego School of Law in 1984 and gained admission to the State Bar of Nevada that same year. Personal injury and criminal defense work then filled 18 years of private practice for Glass. Wolfson & Glass, the firm she started with her husband in 1990, accounted for 12 of those years, and she remained with it until 2002.
Voters elected her to Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District Court in 2002. She was seated in 2003 and worked civil and criminal dockets for eight years, then stepped down in 2011. Her most enduring contribution may have been institutional: the Clark County Mental Health Court, which she helped establish in 2003, and a task force she assembled on competency to stand trial that produced the Clark County Competency Court on November 16, 2005. The National Association of Counties recognized the competency program with an Achievement Award in 2007. In her final year on the bench, she also supervised the district’s drug and alcohol treatment courts. Among the cases on her docket was the prosecution of the bodybuilder Craig Titus and his wife, the fitness competitor Kelly Ryan, over the death of their personal assistant, Melissa James, whose burned body was found in a car in December 2005. Both pleaded guilty rather than stand trial — Titus to second-degree murder, kidnapping and arson, Ryan to arson and battery — and Glass sentenced them on August 23, 2008, Titus to 21 to 55 years and Ryan to six to 26. Their courtroom apologies did not move her. “The tears are crocodile tears,” she said.
A Second Act on Television
Glass traded the courtroom for a studio in 2011, succeeding former Georgia prosecutor Nancy Grace as host of “Swift Justice,” the CBS syndicated show that resolved real small-claims disputes through arbitration. Grace had fronted Season 1, and for Season 2 the production moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Audiences were about to meet another original voice, the show’s executive producer, John Terenzio, said at the time, predicting that viewers would take to her. The show premiered September 13, 2010, and ended in April 2012.
Tributes Pour in Across Nevada
Over the weekend of August 29-30, a legal career that touched five decades drew tributes from across Nevada. Former Clark County District Attorney David Roger, who prosecuted the Simpson case in her courtroom, said in a written statement: “My family and I are very sad to hear about the passing of Jackie Glass. She was a respected jurist. But more importantly, she was a warm and friendly person.” Defense attorney David Chesnoff called her a pioneer, and attorney Tony Sgro called her wicked smart and said the community had suffered a great loss.
Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley wrote on X that she was heartbroken and felt she had lost a sister. The two women entered the legal profession around the same time, she noted, and Glass’ accomplishments had left her marveling. Steve Wolfson and Rebecca Wolfson, her municipal court colleague, received the city’s condolences from Berkley.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., wrote on X: “Judge Glass was an inspiring role model who spent her life fighting for justice for others.”
In a statement, Clark County called Glass a pillar of the legal community who helped shape southern Nevada’s justice system, but said she was above all a beloved wife and mother. The Nevada Broadcasters Association & Foundation issued a statement honoring a career that spanned journalism, law and public service.