
One was killed by a car while trying to escape. Courtroom art was in its heyday from the mid-’30s until 1988, when cameras invaded the court again for the Howard Beach case, which involved a white mob attacking three black men in Queens, New York. To this day, they are not allowed in federal court, although they are permitted in most state courts. But that changed again in 1935, when the Charles Lindbergh kidnapping case, in which the aviator’s 20-month-old son was abducted, became such a media circus that news cameras were banned from courtrooms. The advent of photography in the mid-1800s greatly diminished the need for courtroom art. No wonder caricaturists like Daumier had a field day depicting the court scenes of their time.

While the court functions as the illustrators’ studio, it is first and foremost a stage, one whose players range from the witness to the defendant to the prosecutor to the judge and jury.
#Witness sketch trial full#
Such an extreme reaction is an anomaly, but courtroom art as a genre has always been full of drama. The bakery said they would pay me royalties, but I just asked for cookies, and I still have some in my freezer.” “Lots of people wanted to buy the sketch or have me donate it to charity. There was not a single station that didn’t request my presence,” said Rosenberg. Within days, Brady’s image was being reproduced on T-shirts, mugs, and even cookies. Within minutes of its transmission, multiple memes of the memorable image were flooding the Internet, and Rosenberg was fielding calls from all the major news networks and talk shows, including Good Morning America and The Tonight Show. There was just one wrinkle: Brady’s handsome face resembled a portrait of Dorian Gray, and it instantly went viral. The resulting sketch showed NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and an unhappy-looking Brady, each flanked by his attorneys, at the hearing in federal court in lower Manhattan. Like all courtroom illustrators plying their craft, Rosenberg was racing the clock, trying to nail the scene.


But that wasn’t Jane Rosenberg’s experience when she depicted New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady during Deflategate last August. Usually it’s the legal case, not the courtroom artist, making headlines.
