“We had terrorism alerts on a regular basis,” he says, and this closeness spawned his interest in terrorism. Once he was even detained at a train station in Venice, for “looking like a terrorist.”

While teaching in Turkey, he developed an interest in genocide, especially the Armenian genocide. “The world’s hollow response of ‘never again’ after the Holocaust has contributed greatly to the proliferation of genocides in Africa, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and now the Sudan,” Smith says.

“When I hit 37, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer,” says Smith about his return to the United States with his wife, Lyn, who retired after 23 years in the U.S. Air Force. He enrolled at Northeastern University’s School of Law in 1990, spent a semester studying law in Paris, and after earning his J.D. in 1993 opened his own law practice in his home town of Malden, Mass.

His legal work gravitates toward helping victims of discrimination or people who are unable to navigate “the system.”

He now specializes in criminal defense, bankruptcy, business transactions, family law and immigration law. Smith performs a considerable amount of pro bono service for a Malden community action agency, working on behalf of clients in the areas of bankruptcy, housing and family law.

“I’m committed to representing indigent persons,” he says, and in addition to his pro bono work, Smith has worked part-time since 1994 as a Suffolk County public defender. In his first trial as a public defender, he got a “not guilty” verdict for a disabled Hispanic man who was “being hassled by the police” and arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer. Smith later negotiated a monetary settlement for his client for civil rights violations.

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