The smallish woman sat on a metal bed in a concrete room meant for confining suicidal prison inmates and watched one frosted window cast a sickly glow at her feet.
She wasn’t suicidal. She was in quarantine for 17 days after reporting to the federal women’s penitentiary in Victorville, California, on Dec. 6, 2020, to serve a six-month sentence for trading cocaine and helping to market oxycodone in central Wyoming.
Twenty months earlier, she’d been the highest-ranking judge on the Wind River Tribal Court. Before that, she was a private attorney helping her tribe, the Northern Arapaho.
For 12 years she hid her own addiction to opioids.
But in the chill of quarantine, surrounded by motley and forgettable books and amputated from human contact other than the clockwork rounds of the guards, Terri Smith had a strange realization.
She felt free.
“I was thinking, ‘I’d rather be here in this jail cell than being an addict out there,’” Smith, 39, told Cowboy State Daily in an interview at a coffee shop in Riverton. “I was a slave to that. I was.”
No longer a slave to addiction but still trapped in the bleak room, Smith wrote letters to her loved ones and braced herself for the sentence ahead of her.
Four years later, Smith is working once again on the Wind River Indian Reservation, this time as a peer support specialist to help other addicts find recovery. She’s still with her children’s father, raising two boys ages 9 and 5.
Smith was a little forlorn and a little excited after dropping her youngest son off at kindergarten camp, an introductory program for incoming kindergarteners.
“He wanted to go, and I wasn’t ready to let him go,” she said. “He’s ready to take on the world. I’m like, ‘OK, son.’”
Pressure And Loss
Smith spent part of her childhood on the Wind River and part in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her mother was a single mom who was hospitable to kids and those in need, but who struggled with both poverty and alcohol dependence.
“Two things can be true,” said Smith of her family. “I felt loved, and I felt cared-for, and I could tell them anything. But sometimes there was no food and they were gone for days.”
It was a paradox, she said, adding that she does not resent her family.
Smith graduated from the University of Utah with her bachelor’s degree in 2007.
Her longtime boyfriend, who was believed to be the first Ute tribal member accepted into the university’s law school, died of a drug-and-alcohol-related issue six weeks before graduation.
He was her best friend.
The grief overwhelmed her. When she’d try to sleep, she saw flashes of her boyfriend as she had found him, Smith later told Clifford Fewel on the Stay Free Forever podcast.
She started taking prescription-strength pain pills, Smith told Cowboy State Daily. She basked in the numbness and took more. In college, she sampled cocaine as well.
“I was never really taught to deal with grief,” Smith said. “(And) natives, we’re not really taught to deal with grief on an everyday level — and we have so much grief, we have so much death and loss.”
Many in her family would deal with grief by drinking, she said. She leaned on the quieter intoxication of pain pills.
Celebrated
Smith returned to the Wind River and started working for the private law firm that represented her tribe at the time.
After five years she was asked to serve as an associate judge in what was then an independent Northern Arapaho Court. Later when the Northern Arapaho Court reunited with the Eastern Shoshone Court to form the Wind River Tribal Court, Smith became the chief judge.
The local newspaper ran a glowing feature on her appointment.
Her tribe’s hopes and expectations weighed upon her, Smith recounted to Fewel.
But in private, Smith kept feeding her addiction.
Smith’s twin sister Jerri, who still lived in Salt Lake City, got pills from an older man who had a prescription. Terri Smith took the pills to a cousin, who sold them in Fremont County and gave the money back to Smith. Smith in turn paid her sister, she said.
Like her sister, Jerri Smith was caught and sentenced. She is now out of prison and doing well, Smith said.
During that time, Smith also traded a small amount of cocaine for pills at a Pit Stop in Riverton, she said.
Little did she know, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation agents caught the act on camera.
She said she was also getting buprenorphine illegally in an attempt to wean herself off the pills for the sake of her second son, with whom she was pregnant. The chemical is a non-euphoric drug designed to combat opioid addiction.
And Yet, A Relief
An FBI agent came to Smith’s office in March 2019.
He said he wanted to talk about one of her cousins, Lawrence Oldman, who’d been murdered a few months prior, Smith said.
“It quickly became apparent he was (actually) there for me,” she added. “He had pictures (of drug or money drops). He was asking questions.”
Dread, panic and shame crashed down on her.
She thought of her unborn baby, with whom she was nearly eight months pregnant. She thought of her other son, her family, her job and her tribe.
But she also felt relief, Smith said.
“I don’t have to live like this anymore,” she said of what also went through her mind. “Because prior to me being indicted and held accountable, every single day I woke up like, ‘Is this going to be me for the rest of my life? Am I going to live this double life to feed my habit?’ And I saw no way out of it because there was such stigma with addiction.”
Her prestigious position and composed life had made it even harder for her to seek help because she didn’t want to let others down, she said.
The FBI agent asked if he could look through her phone.
She said no.
He said he’d secure a warrant for it, and in the meantime would sit with her in her office for however many hours it took, Smith recalled.
“’Fine, you can have my phone,’” she said with a sigh. All the dirt was there.
Later, when state prosecutors charged some of Smith’s associates, court documents included details from her “proffer,” or grant of evidence, to investigators. But Smith said the proffer was symbolic: Investigators had the evidence from her phone already.
She maintains that she did not mix her work as a judge with her drug deals.
Her sentencing mitigation specialist and now-friend John Olive attests to that as well, telling Cowboy State Daily that he figured a judge convicted on drug-marketing charges would have been using her influence to jail competitors, but he was relieved to find that wasn’t the case.
Into Court
A federal magistrate arraigned Smith on March 27, 2019, in a small Lander outpost of the U.S. District Court for Wyoming. Still visibly pregnant, Smith wore black slacks, a black fleece jacket and black-rimmed glasses. She spoke softly.
While drug cases would normally register as a blip on page 5 of the county’s local paper, coverage of Smith’s case went national because she was a judge.
She had to shut out the noise and move forward.
She left her job on maternity leave, and then permanently. She swallowed her pride and saw a Casper doctor about her addiction. The doctor prescribed a pregnancy-friendly level of buprenorphine, the same chemical Smith had been getting illegally to combat her addiction.
Smith gave birth to her youngest son five weeks after her arraignment while out on bond and took him with her to in-patient addiction treatment in Rock Springs.
Three years later, Smith would start receiving four Sublocade injections — the last of her drug taper. She hasn’t needed addiction treatments since March of 2023, court documents say.
Judge’s Word
Smith pleaded guilty Aug. 6, 2019, in a “cold plea,” meaning she didn’t have a plea agreement in place. It was a gamble.
The COVID-19 pandemic descended soon after and delayed follow-up court proceedings. Smith waited more than a year to be sentenced.
Though his sentencing guidelines recommended a term of 12-18 months, U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson gave Smith a split sentence of six months in prison and another six months of ankle-monitor probation at home, to be followed by three years’ probation.
Last year when Johnson saw Smith’s personal and professional progress, he ended her probation early.
Smith tells people that Johnson is a good and understanding judge.
Johnson redirected the praise in a phone interview with Cowboy State Daily.
“All credit goes to Terri,” said Johnson of her apparent recovery. “She’s the person who really accomplished everything in her life. Give her 100% of the credit.”
Smith’s attorney Colin Simpson voiced a similar sentiment.
“It’s just wonderful to see what she’s done as a result of a very traumatic event in her life and her family’s lives,” said Simpson. “I’m really proud of her.”
And The Secret Is …
Aside from her doctor’s help, the two keys to Smith’s recovery have been accountability and gratitude, she said.
Her accountability was evident during her interview. She used phrases like “but it was my fault,” and characterized her yearslong hunt for pills as blind and selfish.
Her gratitude is a daily practice.
“I get up and I’m thankful for every little thing I have — a bed, a pillow, a shower and just being next to my kids,” said Smith. “I know what it’s like to not have them.”
Though federal prison was much easier once her quarantine was over and took the form of a “camp” complete with day jobs, Cheetos and outdoor exercise, Smith ached for her kids during her sentence. She missed out on her older son’s fifth birthday. She’d had to leave her baby when he was 18 months old.
She got out two months early on good time and paroled at Casper Reentry Center. Then the former chief judge on the Wind River got a job as a room cleaner for the local Holiday Inn. She’d never had a physical labor job before, and she toiled harder than ever before for a meager paycheck.
“But I was so proud of myself when I got it,” she said with a chuckle. “I never had to do that type of work, and I have so much appreciation for it now.”
After two months of that she came home to serve her sentence of ankle-monitor probation with her now toddler-aged youngest by her side all day.
Smith became a peer support specialist so she could help others struggling with addiction.
This is how Smith has chosen to give back to the community she once damaged, Olive theorized.
“(During her probation) I thought she was someone who, if she was living in voluntary recovery, could be a major asset to others on the Wind River Indian Reservation,” he said, adding that he’s been impressed with her courage in returning to that community, and has met people who have benefited from her help.
Lana Mahoney, executive director of Recover Wyoming, said Smith’s transparency about her own case is a path forward for others.
“She provides a lot of hope for people still struggling,” said Mahoney. “I think that’s really important.”
It wasn't easy to return to the Wind River, Smith said. It's a small community with interwoven family ties: everyone knows everyone. She apologized formally to her tribal council, she recalled.
But Smith said she was surprised to find a few people who never lost faith in her, and she feels welcome again within her tribe.
"The Arapaho people are forgiving in general," she said.
Grateful For The Agents Who Caught Me
Smith said she’s even grateful for the DCI agents who caught her. They brought her to a fresh start.
The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation is happy with the outcome too.
“It is very rewarding for agents to be involved in excellent investigations and to see positive changes in the community as well as in individuals as a result of their difficult work,” DCI Director Ronnie Jones told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday email. “We are very thankful this has turned into a positive event for Ms. Smith.
“I commend her courage to share her story and her dedication to her recovery. I also commend the agents and all the public servants who do their jobs every day in a professional manner to not only enforce the law, but to provide assistance to anyone in need of help to better their situation and to improve our communities throughout the state.”
Going Forward
Going forward, Smith hopes to get her law license back.
She was disbarred for a term of five years while in prison, but she’s now taking the refresher courses required to reapply for her license.
Though a convicted felon, Smith said she’s applying to restore her voting rights as well.
And she spreads her story.
She’s written columns, appeared on podcasts and presented her story at a symposium for DCI.
What Smith wants most, she said, is to show others that through accountability and gratitude there’s hope, and sometimes triumph.
“I did the work to get better and to do better, so I’m not ashamed of (my past),” she said. “And I want people to see, no matter who you are, how far you’ve fallen, you can learn and do better.”
Contact Clair McFarland at clair@cowboystatedaily.com
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
