Prosecuting Attorney Smith reflects on whirlwind journey

After being hired as Teton County’s Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney in summer 2020, serving under Billie Siddoway, Smith was looking forward to getting to know the area and the office.

Only two months after she was hired, however, Siddoway asked Smith to run for Prosecuting Attorney in the November 2020 election.

To say that her time as Chief Deputy was shorter than originally planned, well, “that’s putting it lightly,” said Smith.

Smith was asked to run only 80 days before election day and had received no prior indication that Siddoway was going to ask her to run.

“It was a massive challenge,” said Smith of her subsequent campaign. “There were lots of late nights and weekends. It was an absolute whirlwind. Handling cases and the general criminal premises, that’s not the problem. It was getting to know all the intricacies of our local jurisdiction and a lot of the time, logistical things.”

Looking back, Smith believes that Siddoway wouldn’t have asked her to run if she didn’t see something in her. Siddoway also knew that Smith was not too pretentious to ask for answers that she didn’t know.

“I’d like to think she saw someone who had enough experience,” said Smith. “She felt comfortable that if I didn’t know what I was capable of, not just learning it, but that I also wasn’t too prideful to ask a question. I’ve always been very open with people about that if I don’t know the answer, I’m going to be the first one to tell you that, and I’m going to be open about going to find the answer. No one is served if someone in this office or any other elected office, for the sake of how it looks, is pretending that they know everything. That’s not a service to anyone.”

Smith would go on to defeat candidate Alex Sosa, abruptly elevating Smith to the top prosecutorial role in Teton County. She knew that the role would require much more than in-court skill before the election, but that wasn’t validated until she had spent time in the role.

“The position really does take a lot more than just being a good lawyer. That wasn’t a shock, obviously, but it really does hit home after you do the job for a while that there is so much more than lawyering that’s involved in this. There is personnel management, financial management, and interpersonal workings to deal with,” said Smith. “You can’t just come in and be a lawyer. You have to explain to the public what’s happening in what otherwise might be unapproachable or complicated situations.”

The success of that approach is illustrated by Smith’s willingness to perform community outreach, such as the self-defense and firearm forum she held with Bonneville County Prosecuting Attorney Randy Niel in January.

“I was shocked that on a snow day, half the auditorium was full of people that really, truly wanted to come out and learn more. I had no problem spending two and a half, three hours helping educate a group of people like that,” said Smith. “That’s really rewarding. Talking at schools is also really rewarding. The kids tend to get really involved and have lots of good questions, and you can usually see an actual progression between their answers at the beginning versus talking to them at the end. They actually learned some things.”

In the courtroom, Smith is served well by her past experience which mostly happened on the other side of the aisle, on the defense’s desk.

“Being a prosecutor that comes from a defense background is really helpful because you not only know what’s going on on the other side of the table, but you also have an understanding as to what the defendants in your cases might need,” said Smith.

“Sometimes they might have sort of an understanding of a treatment need, sometimes not. Having been on the other side of the table, I think that’s really valuable, not just from a strategic element that I can anticipate what might be going on from a litigation perspective, but also having the insight into treatment is helpful and something that I’ve really tried to do as a prosecutor,” said Smith.

Smith knew she wanted to go to law school as a 14-year-old. At the time, she did not envision herself as a lawyer though… She originally hoped to work in the Department of State as an ambassador.

Once in law school, Smith had a change of mind and decided to work towards a career in the courts.

“I didn’t actually know that I wanted to be a lawyer until I was in law school and decided that, you know, hey, this (law degree) isn’t just a tool to be a better diplomat. I thought I could actually make a good deal of difference in the world being a lawyer,” said Smith.

That decision led to the experience of working for the Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan at the United States District Court for the District of Colombia. After graduating from George Washington University, she worked for a couple of highly regarded law firms in New York and represented indigent clients on a pro bono basis. She was on track to become a “Big time” lawyer.

“If you had asked me five years ago what I was going to do, I would probably tell you I’d be at the US Attorney’s office in New York right now,” said Smith.

One must ask then, how could Teton County compete with that career path? Like many of us who live here, once she saw a glimpse of Teton Valley, she was sold.

“I think I was 13 or 14, and it was the most incredible place I’d ever been,” said Smith. “There’s skiing, there’s horses, there’s everything that I could ever want in life. And I did not grow out of that. This was my end game from a pretty young age.”

Smith’s journey was undoubtedly aided by many women along her way. The first of these influences came in her early years at the firms she worked for in New York, which had substantial female representation in the workplace.

“I was really lucky to work with some real powerhouse lady partners who were practicing in the fields that I wanted to practice in, and they were just really awesome to work for. It would have been awesome regardless of their gender, but to have them be ladies in a male-dominated field, it just in some ways sort of normalized it for me. I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that you survey the room of 200 and there are 15 women, but working with some really accomplished women was pretty cool,” said Smith.

Smith described her experiences as the exception.

“I definitely don’t feel like my experience was the norm, so I am cognizant that there are still difficulties out there,” said Smith. “I think that some people that I graduated law school with have had some different experiences than me, whether it’s, you know, they went to a firm where they didn’t feel like it was perhaps equal treatment or they felt like there were some barriers there.”

Smith also recognized that her landing spot in Teton County was a good one as a female, describing the region as a bastion for women in elected office.

“It’s actually been sort of joked about at various bar association events that we’ve got the ‘Women Power Corner’,” said Smith, proudly. “The county to the north, we’ve got Lindsey Blake as the prosecuting attorney there and Tawnya Rawlings as her chief deputy. The office next to me is Erin Weisman. Our office is predominantly women. So I actually feel like we have kind of a little stronghold here in Idaho.”

“It’s great to see that women are putting themselves out there and also managing families as well as their jobs, which is good to see,” said Smith.