Unteterred
Subtitle: memoirs of an unusual magistrate
By: by Judge Peter S. Smith (Ret.).
Publisher: Jada Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Atlanta, GA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 194
ISBN-13: 9780984836567
Subjects: Judges; Biography; Juges; Biographies
Description: After graduduating from UC Berkeley, Smith gained experience in the US Army from 1955 to 1957. He then attended Loyola Law School. In a moot court competition, Smith gave the best oral argument. Smith practiced as a lawyer for a period of time, became an Alhambra Municipal Court Judge, and then a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge. While he was a Municipal Court Judge, one of his cases made history. Smith issued a pretrial gag order to protect the defendant's right to a fair trial. The Court of Appeal upheld the validity of Smith's gag order for the first time. In 1979, Judge Smith presided over a death penalty trial without a jury. Both sides-defense and prosecution had to place enormous trust in Smith because Smith's ruling was a Undeterred 193 Author after climbing Thumb Butte Mountain, 2003 Undeterred_2 6/26/13 8:14 PM Page 193 matter of life and death for the accused. Death penalty trials without a jury were almost unheard of. Smith, in 1981, presided over the libel case of Carol Burnett v the National Enquirer. It was the first civil jury trial to be televised nationally. From 1988 to 2001, Smith was a private arbitrator and mediator. Thousands of clients completely trusted him and paid him accordingly. After retiring from being an arbitrator, Smith wrote his first novel, The Magistrates. He entered the novel in a contest along with 750 other contestants and won First Prize. He began yet another career, this time as an award-winning writer. Judge Smith never gave up on himself or anyone else. In his 70s, he was hit with a catastrophic staph infection. Doc - tors told him it was unlikely that he would ever walk again. One year after the staph infection, Judge Smith walked up a mountain called Thumb Butte in Prescott, Arizona.