Jackie Glass, the Nevada judge who sentenced OJ Simpson to 33 years in prison for armed robbery, died in Las Vegas on Friday, 28 August 2026, at the age of 70.
Her daughter, Rachel Wolfson, announced the death in a tribute posted to Facebook, as reported by TMZ.
No cause of death was disclosed. Glass retired from the bench in 2011, worked in television afterwards, and had also reported for a Las Vegas television station in the early 1980s.
Jackie Glass and the sentence handed to OJ Simpson
Simpson was convicted in 2008 of armed robbery and kidnapping following a confrontation in a Las Vegas hotel room over sports memorabilia. Glass presided over the trial in Clark County and handed down the 33-year sentence, which carried the possibility of parole.
The Las Vegas case was legally separate from the 1995 California murder trial in which Simpson was acquitted, and it was the only criminal matter for which he served a custodial sentence.
He was released on parole in 2017 and died in April 2024.
From the Clark County bench to daytime television
Glass spent eight years on the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County, the trial court that hears felony matters for Las Vegas and the surrounding area. She left the bench in 2011 and moved into television, hosting the syndicated series Swift Justice as successor to Nancy Grace.
Swift Justice placed her in a genre of syndicated courtroom programmes in which a former judge arbitrated civil disputes before a studio audience. The format gave Glass a national profile beyond Nevada, where her work had been confined to a single district court.
Tributes after Jackie Glass dies at 70
Wolfson, a comedian and stuntwoman known for her work on the Jackass franchise, dealt with her mother rather than the courtroom career that made Glass a familiar name across the United States. Her post was written as direct address, in one unbroken line, and named no case and no programme:
“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.”
Glass was married to Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, and the couple had two daughters. One of them, Rebecca Wolfson, sits as a judge on the Las Vegas municipal court, which keeps a second member of the family on a bench in the city where her mother served.
No cause of death had been made public by Saturday, 29 August 2026, and no memorial arrangements had been announced. Glass had not sat as a judge since 2011, but the sentence she delivered three years before that remained the ruling most closely tied to her name.
