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Judge's daughter faces robbery
charges
By PAUL TURENNE, SUN MEDIA
The Winnipeg Sun
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July 12, 2008
The daughter of a provincial court judge was granted bail yesterday in a Winnipeg courtroom. Jessica Linda Smith has been charged with seven offences including robbery with a weapon, possession of a prohibited weapon, and wearing a disguise in relation to a pair of robberies that took place March 5 and 6. She is also charged with five breaches of court conditions, including alleged violations of weapons and intoxicating substance bans. A source confirmed that Smith is the adult daughter of provincial court Judge Marva Smith. Marva Smith is perhaps best known as the judge who in the summer of 2006 presented a teenage robber with a bouquet of flowers as a reward for her progress. She has also made a couple of controversial rulings involving police. In May 2007, she ruled officers who entered a woman's home while investigating a possible domestic disturbance had no right to continue to press into the home once the woman told them there was no trouble. The woman was initially charged with assaulting the officers, but Smith acquitted her, ruling the officers were trespassing and the woman was using reasonable force against them. Also in 2007, Smith ruled a Winnipeg police sergeant should be disciplined for failing to inform a woman of her rights while officers performed a search of her North End home. The woman, her husband and son were placed in cruisers as officers searched her home looking for a gun a tipster said they would find there. No gun was found. This past May, a Queen's Bench justice overruled her decision, saying the officers could have done things differently but did nothing that would warrant discipline.
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