Jackie Glass, the retired Clark County district judge whose 2008 sentencing of former football star O.J. Simpson put her on national television screens and who later hosted 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 over the following hours.
No cause of death has been made public. Glass is survived by her husband, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, and by two daughters, Rachel and Rebecca Wolfson, who sits as a Las Vegas Municipal Court judge.
The Case That Made Her a National Name
Most of the country knew her as the judge who sent Simpson to prison. Armed robbery and kidnapping counts, stemming from a September 2007 confrontation at the Palace Station casino, drew him a term of up to 33 years when she pronounced sentence inside the Clark County Regional Justice Center on December 5, 2008; parole was possible after nine. Simpson and five other men had forced their way into a hotel room there, trying to seize sports memorabilia he said was his.
The apology Simpson offered in court got nowhere with Glass, who told him his conduct had been arrogant as well as ignorant. She then sent him to prison in shackles. “It was much more than stupidity,” she said from the bench.
It was not their first confrontation. Simpson breached the terms of his release in January 2008, and Glass responded by doubling his bail to $250,000 and rebuking him in open court, asking aloud whether arrogance, ignorance or some mix of the two accounted for his behavior.
Parole came for Simpson in 2017. He died of prostate cancer in April 2024 at 76.
From TV News to the Courtroom
Born in New York in 1956, Glass arrived in Las Vegas in 1978 carrying a journalism degree from the University of Georgia and a reporting job at KORK-AM, 920. KTNV-TV, Channel 13, later hired her to cover crime and anchor newscasts, and that beat pushed her toward a career in 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 the same year. Glass then practiced privately for 18 years, taking personal injury and criminal defense cases, 12 of those years at Wolfson & Glass, the firm she started with her husband in 1990 and left in 2002.
Voters elected her to Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District Court in 2002. She took her seat in 2003 and worked civil and criminal dockets for eight years before stepping down in 2011. Institutional work may have been her most enduring contribution: the Clark County Mental Health Court, which she helped establish in December 2003, was one product of it, and a task force she assembled on competency to stand trial 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 oversaw the district’s drug and alcohol treatment courts. Her caseload included the murder prosecution of onetime professional bodybuilder Craig Titus and his wife, Kelly Ryan.
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 program that resolved real small-claims disputes through arbitration. Grace had fronted Season 1, and Season 2 relocated the production from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Executive producer John Terenzio said at the time that he was eager to introduce audiences to another original voice, and he predicted viewers would take to her. The show began in 2010 and ended in April 2012.
Tributes Flow Across Nevada
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson spoke publicly about his wife for the first time since her death during an interview at his office on Tuesday, September 1. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that beyond the judge who sentenced O.J. Simpson, she was a wife, a mother and a mediator. “She loved helping people,” he said.
Condolences had already poured in across Nevada over the weekend for a legal career that touched five decades. A statement from David Roger, the former Clark County district attorney who prosecuted the Simpson case in Glass’ courtroom, described her as a respected jurist and, more meaningfully, a warm and friendly person.
Heartbreak and the sense that she had lost a sister were what Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley described in a post on X. The two women entered the legal profession around the same time, Berkley noted, and she had marveled at everything Glass achieved. She extended the city’s condolences to Steve Wolfson and to her municipal court colleague, Rebecca Wolfson.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said the news left her stunned and grieving. Writing on X, she said Glass had inspired others as a role model, had given her life to the pursuit of justice for other people, and had seen her light extinguished too soon.
In a statement, Clark County called Glass a pillar of the legal community who helped shape southern Nevada’s justice system, adding that a beloved wife and mother was above all what she had been. Broadcasting, journalism, law and public service were the fields her legacy reached across, the Nevada Broadcasters Association & Foundation said, calling that legacy an extraordinary one and saying her career touched countless lives.
