Jackie Glass, judge who sentenced O.J. Simpson and later hosted 'Swift Justice,' dies at 70

Jackie Glass, the former Clark County judge who sentenced O.J. Simpson to prison in 2008 and later spent a season hosting the syndicated arbitration show "Swift Justice," died Friday in Las Vegas. She was 70.

Her death was first reported Friday evening by TMZ after her daughter, the comedian Rachel Wolfson, posted a tribute on Facebook. No cause of death has been disclosed. Glass's death was subsequently confirmed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and by Deadline, which noted her television work under the show's original syndication deal.

A judge who became a courtroom-television host

Before law school, Glass worked as a broadcast journalist, first as a radio news reporter and then as a television anchor and crime reporter in Las Vegas — a first career in front of a camera that she would return to decades later. She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1978 and a law degree from the University of San Diego in 1984, then went into private practice before spending time as an attorney for the City of Las Vegas' Senior Citizens Law Project.

Glass spent eight and a half years on the bench of the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County, Nevada, after her election in 2002, a tenure documented in the state judiciary's own fiscal year 2010 annual report. She retired in 2011, then took over hosting duties on the second season of "Swift Justice," a syndicated program built around binding arbitration of small-claims disputes, succeeding Nancy Grace and moving the production from Atlanta to Los Angeles. The series ended in April 2012.

It was her work on the bench, not television, that made her a national name. In September 2008 she presided over State of Nevada v. Simpson, the armed-robbery and kidnapping case brought after O.J. Simpson and five associates, at least two of them armed, confronted two sports-memorabilia dealers in a room at the Palace Station hotel in September 2007 to reclaim items Simpson said had been stolen from him. A jury convicted Simpson and co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart on all counts on October 3, 2008 — a date that fell exactly 13 years after Simpson's acquittal in the 1995 murder trial of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a coincidence widely noted by reporters covering the case at the time. Several other co-defendants avoided prison entirely, receiving probation instead.

In December 2008, Glass sentenced Simpson to a term of nine to 33 years, with parole eligibility after roughly a third of the sentence. Months earlier, at a bail hearing, she had accused Simpson of "arrogance or ignorance or both" after he violated the terms of his release, and doubled his bail to $250,000. At sentencing, she told the courtroom the evidence — planning, confrontation and aftermath — had been captured on audio or videotape, calling it overwhelming. Simpson was paroled in 2017 and died of cancer in 2024.

The numbers behind a long docket

Glass's judicial record extended well past the Simpson case. During her tenure she helped establish Clark County's Mental Health Court in 2003 and its Competency Court in 2005, and she oversaw the county's drug and alcohol treatment courts before leaving the bench. She also presided over the murder trial of professional bodybuilders Craig Titus and Kelly Ryan and an extortion case tied to Celine Dion's husband, René Angélil.

After television, Glass moved into private mediation and arbitration work, joining Private Trials in 2012 before settling at Advanced Resolution Management in 2015. According to her professional biography with the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals, she had completed close to 700 mediations and 35 arbitrations by the time of her death, a caseload built almost entirely in the years after she left public office.

Who is affected

Glass is survived by her husband, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, whose official county biography lists a current term running through January 2027, and by two daughters: Rebecca Wolfson, a sitting Las Vegas Municipal Court judge, and Rachel Wolfson, a comedian who has drawn material from her mother's judicial career in her stand-up act. The couple met and later became law partners as Wolfson & Glass before Glass won her judgeship in 2002.

Her death also registers within Clark County's legal community, where she was known for building specialty courts still in operation nearly two decades later, and within the smaller world of televised arbitration programming, a genre she entered relatively late in a legal career built mostly outside the cameras.

Reaction

Tributes arrived quickly from Nevada's legal and political establishment. Former Clark County District Attorney David Roger, whose tenure overlapped with Glass's years on the bench, said in a statement carried by Fox5 Las Vegas: "She was a respected jurist. But more importantly, she was a warm and friendly person." Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley said she was "heartbroken and feel[s] like I have lost a sister with the passing of Jackie Glass."

The most personal statement came from her daughter Rachel, whose Facebook post prompted the initial news coverage.

"RIP my rock. I don't know how I'll do this life without you, I love you so much mommy Jackie Glass, I'll see you again someday."

Local Las Vegas television coverage noted that funeral arrangements had not been announced as of Friday night.

What happens next

No public memorial details have been released. Glass's death leaves Advanced Resolution Management, the mediation firm where she practiced, to redistribute an active docket built over roughly a decade of post-bench work. In Clark County's legal community, attention is expected to turn toward how the specialty courts she helped found continue to operate, and toward her husband's final months in a district attorney's term that concludes in January 2027. Her death was announced too late Friday for wire obituaries to run in Saturday print editions; fuller retrospectives on her nine years on the bench, including the Simpson case that defined her public profile, are expected from Nevada outlets in the coming days.