Smith was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court by Gov. Francis Sargent in 1972, and associate justice of the Appeals Court by Gov. Edward King in 1981.
Kent B. SmithLONGMEADOW - Colleagues remembered retired Massachusetts Appeals Court Justice Kent B. Smith who died Wednesday.
Smith, 85, retired from the Massachusetts Appeals Court at age 70, but continued to serve as a recall judge on the Massachusetts Appeals Court. He last presided in August.
Retired Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice John Greaney of Westfield, 73, a law professor at Suffolk University, said Smith was a mentor to him.
“He helped acclimate me to the Massachusetts Superior Court,” Greaney said.
In 1972 Smith was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court by Gov. Francis Sargent. He served on that court until 1981, when he was appointed an associate justice of the Appeals Court by Gov. Edward King.
After reaching mandatory retirement age in 1997, Smith remained with the Appeals Court as a recall justice.
Smith was always “compassionate, fair and understanding,” Greaney said. He added, “He was still working.”
Smith was born in Burlington, Vt., on March 11, 1927. He received a B.A. from American International College and graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1951.
In August of 1954 Smith became the first attorney appointed to represent indigent criminal defendants in Western Massachusetts.
Smith is the author of Criminal Practice and Procedure, a three-volume work in the Massachusetts Practice series. The work has been issued in three editions and more than 20 supplements since its original publication in 1970.
Arthur Wolf, of Wilbraham, a longtime law professor at Western New England University, remembered Smith as “a tall, husky mountain of a man.”
“He was funny, and he brought humor to the court,” Wolf said. “His questions were always right on the mark.”
Many lawyers consulted his work on criminal law, Wolf said.
Greaney said one of Smith’s more noteworthy trials in Superior Court occurred in Franklin County in 1974 when Samuel Lovejoy, as an act of civil disobedience, toppled a tower in Montague that was to be used for a nuclear power facility. At the close of the prosecution’s case, Smith ordered that a required finding of not guilty be entered for Lovejoy, who went on to become an attorney.
“Civil disobedience in those days was quite common,” Greaney said. He added, “Maybe the judge’s finding caused Lovejoy to think law a noble career.”
“Smith had many notable findings while on the Appeals Court,” Greaney said. “He was known for his correctness, clarity and fairness.”
Smith’s daughter, Barbara Carra, of Longmeadow, said her father inspired her to go to law school.
“His love for the law was second only to his love for his family,” she said.
She added that “Western Massachusetts meant so much to him.”
Carra said her father had “an encyclopedic mind” and remembered cases from years ago. She said he also had a wonderful sense of humor.
When he was seriously ill in the hospital, he continued to lighten the situation, even to the end, she said.
Smith leaves his wife, Marguerite Irwin Smith, and two daughters: Carra, of Longmeadow, and Margaret Kennedy ,of East Longmeadow; a grandson and a granddaughter.