December 28, 2004

Courtroom sketch artists

Are there still people acting as courtroom sketch artists? They always show the sketches on the evening news, and I don't really understand the point. Couldn't they just take a blurry picture? It seems like such a waste to have a person employed just to draw pictures of a trial. A painting of Judge Ito just isn't any more informative than a photograph. Is this just another way of keeping records? Does the picture get filed along with the testimony? So that the jury, while deliberating, can request the picture of the defendant's testimony because they can't remember if he was wearing blue or black slacks?

I wonder if Judge Judy or the People's Court have a courtroom artist? For Judge Judy, I bet every picture looks the same - her with her mouth open yelling at a redneck. What makes a person want to go on Judge Judy? She's like your friend's irrationally mean mother. They must have recruiters looking for "interesting" cases, because I cannot imagine at what point in a disagreement two people are like, "We should take this to Judge Judy. She's such a good judge she gets to be on television every day! Plus the cases are heard fairly, and the well being of both parties is obviously the foremost concern." Posted by mill1991 at December 28, 2004 12:56 PM | TrackBack

Comments

They do portraits because cameras are banned from the courtroom, except on rare occasions like the OJ trial.

I particularly hate Judge Judy because she pretends to listen to both sides, then she rules in favor of the person who pissed her off the least.

Posted by: Carl/Qwerty at December 28, 2004 2:22 PM

I am looking for a courtroom artist named Rebecca Feldman Booyer. I went to school with her and would like to find her again. She works in New York

Posted by: Kerry Koontz at March 22, 2005 6:39 PM

I have been wiki'ing and googling about this recently, to try and fathom WHY do they allow such a horrible thing as "courtroom sketching" done? (your blog entry is listed fairly high.)This sounds completely inane. Hi, I'm going to take a test, and not cheat, because I'm "courtroom sketching" a "rendition" of the answers from the book on the palm of my hand to look at while taking the test, because you know, I like to have some art to inspire me while I take tests. Then I'm going to publish an article and "render" some text from another author- hey, we don't want to plagerize now do we?

HELLO people. Artwork is, if anything, SUBJECTIVE- does anyone actually think they're helping justice or the public in any way whatsoever by allowing this?

Posted by: David Boudreau at June 6, 2005 1:19 AM

I happen to be able to use my skills as a portrait artist to do court room sketching for a local TV channel, occasionly. A TV reporter without a camera in the court room would have to face the public on nightly news telling the story and use an occasional stale file photo . The sketch, although not able to convey all the true emotion of the moment, takes the viewer into the court room, gives a fresh insight to the goings on, and assists the reporter in telling the story. On a recent local trial, it involved many under age girls whose parents and witnesses had to remain faceless. The station played sound bites of parents testifying with my faceless images - very emotional when put together on TV.

The artist sometimes has 3 minutes to capture the subject, render a really good likeness and be aware that the TV camera can take a close up of even the most minute portion of a sketch.

Posted by: pat gillin at September 10, 2005 10:41 AM