Smith, longtime resident, Goodsprings JP, dies

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 | 9:02 a.m.

Janet Curtis Smith, the Goodsprings justice of the peace for 12 years, who presided over the highly publicized Jeremy Strohmeyer case in 1997 and served in the 1970s as a top aide to Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, died Tuesday. She was 76.

Smith died at Summerlin Hospital after a brief illness.

Services for Smith, a Southern Nevada resident of 67 years, will be 11 a.m. Monday at Palm Mortuary-Cheyenne, between Tenaya Way and Buffalo Road.

Smith also was the mother of Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith, a former Las Vegas Sun sports editor.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Neil O'Callaghan, eldest child of Mike and Carolyn O'Callaghan, who died last year, said Smith would have made "a great frontier's woman because no one was tougher than her."

"She did not tolerate nonsense," O'Callaghan said. "Yet she also was genuine and loving. I respected her immensely."

O'Callaghan said his family was so close to Smith's family that the O'Callaghan children called her "Aunt Jan." O'Callaghan fondly recalled the children of both families playing together in the Cold War-era bomb shelter of her home in Henderson.

Smith, who retired from the bench in July 1999, gained national attention in 1997 when her courtroom was the site of the Strohmeyer case.

Strohmeyer, 19, confessed to the May 25, 1997, rape and killing of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson at the Primm Valley hotel near the Nevada/California border.

Smith's legal career also included stints as a court clerk to U.S. District Judge Roger Foley and as a records and research clerk in the Clark County district attorney's office.

Born April 26, 1928, in Los Angeles, Smith moved with her family to Southern Nevada at age 10.

She served as a legal secretary to District Judge Thomas O'Donnell for four years before being appointed in 1971 by O'Callaghan to serve as his administrative assistant.

"She was my father's right-hand person, running his Southern Nevada office," O'Callaghan said. "She was crucial to carrying out my dad's vision."

Smith, who was a longtime resident of Sandy Valley, was appointed to the Goodsprings justice of the peace post in July 1987 by the Clark County Commission following the retirement of Stuart A. McCarthy.

She was re-elected in 1988 to the court that has jurisdiction of Goodsprings, Sloan and Jean and territory south and west to the state line.

Smith primarily oversaw cases involving traffic accidents, driving under the influence and embezzlement from area casinos.