Courtroom Artists as Eyes of the Public

When a high-profile trial takes place in Los Angeles, sketch artist Bill Robles wheels his black canvas briefcase into the crowded courthouse, navigating past the familiar faces of security guards and news reporters.

He always grabs a seat in the front row, at the far end of the courtroom, then flips open his drawing pad and a box of colored markers. “It’s good to get on the end,” Robles says, “because you get an overall view. The middle is not good because you get the backs of people.”

Even reporters who usually vie for the best seats in the house defer to Robles’ needs.

He and another artist, Mona Shafer Edwards, serve as the eyes of the public when cameras are banned from court proceedings.

Robles’ career began more than three decades ago with the Charles Manson trial, during which he captured with markers Manson lunging at the judge with a pencil. Since then, Robles has sketched some of the most high-profile defendants in recent history, from O.J. Simpson to the Unabomber.

“The scariest guy I ever saw in my 31 years was the Night Stalker,” Robles recalls in his small, brightly lighted Santa Monica art studio, referring to the mid-1980s serial killer Richard Ramirez. “Manson looked like a saint compared to him.”

Edwards, a fashion artist who turned to court sketching 24 years ago, says the trial that haunts her most is that of Charles Rathbun, a photographer convicted of brutalizing and killing a model during a photo shoot.

Despite the gruesomeness of some of the trials they cover, Robles and Edwards say their work is mostly pleasant. Straddling the worlds of journalism and art, they seem immune from the suspicion and ill will that reporters sometimes face from the families of victims or defendants.

“People are really interested in what we do,” Edwards says. She recalls an accused drug lord’s family asking to buy one of her sketches, but she refused out of fear of having too much personal contact with them.

Unlike print journalists, sketch artists have a certain amount of artistic license. If a lawyer obstructs their view of the judge, they move the lawyer out of the way in the drawing. Edwards says she took even greater liberties during the lengthy Simpson trials, filling “down time” by placing red socks or socks with tiny daisies on them in her sketches of the lawyers.

The two are also sometimes approached by attorneys with special requests. “They ask, ‘Can you make me thinner?’ or ‘Can you put more hair on me?’” Edwards says.

The flexible nature of drawings makes them more useful than cameras in some cases. When a judge bars the depiction of jurors or a child witness, a cameraman is prohibited from aiming in their direction. But an artist can draw the outline of the forbidden subject, obscuring the face, and thus provide a lawful visual representation.

The artists say sketches show courtroom drama in a way that a camera cannot. “I think people are still entranced by it,” Edwards says. “It captures the essence of somebody, and the soul.”

But the demand for court sketching has waned since the mid-1980s, when the State Judicial Council gave judges discretion to televise trials. TV stations also have an array of other visual tools, including graphics and old footage. “We have become so used to seeing the real thing that getting an artist rendition often pales in comparison,” says Jennifer Siebens, CBS’ Los Angeles bureau chief.

One place sketch artists continue to be needed, Siebens says, is in federal court, where there is an absolute ban on cameras.

Robles misses the days when the media hired artists for day-to-day coverage of big trials. “They make do with less today,” Robles says, using the example of coverage of the San Francisco dog mauling case that ended Thursday in Los Angeles. “They just keep milking images [from opening statements] over and over again.”

The artists, who describe themselves as friendly competitors, charge major clients, such as networks and national wire services, $400 per court appearance, and smaller stations and newspapers $350. But they are usually not bound to the client that called them for the job.

If other news crews are present at the courthouse and want to film the sketches, they can do it for the same fee. Robles says that on a good day, as many as 14 TV stations have used his work.

Edwards recalls an incident in which a Los Angeles-based Korean TV crew asked how much it cost to film one of her drawings. “Three-fifty,” she told them. After the crew shot the sketch, the reporter pulled out his wallet and gave her $3.50. “I was like, ‘What do you think I’m selling? Oranges?’” she says. Edwards demanded that they erase the footage.

Because they can sometimes go for months without an assignment, the artists supplement their incomes with other art jobs. Robles has drawn wine labels, dog portraits and rocket launches. Edwards has designed a line of underwear and done fashion sketches for newspapers and textbooks.

A large chunk of the artists’ earnings comes from the work they sell to attorneys, who pay hundreds of dollars for sketches of their noteworthy cases. It’s also commonplace in legal circles to buy a sketch as a gift for a fellow lawyer.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles pooled together to buy a $500 sketch as a going-away present for their boss, U.S. Atty. Alejandro Mayorkas, who stepped down last year. It depicted Mayorkas, an assistant U.S. attorney at the time, prosecuting Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, with actor Charlie Sheen on a TV monitor during a taped deposition.

“If you have a good case, you can put it on your ego wall,” says Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, who has bought several sketches. Geragos is defending actress Winona Ryder in her shoplifting case and has asked Robles to sell a sketch.

Civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman walks into his Venice office every morning to the sight of a blow-up of a sketch Robles did during a police brutality trial in which San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies were sued for beating a group of Mexican laborers.

“That case really symbolized the best kind of freedoms that we have in America: access to our courts by people who are not from here, who have been hurt by the government and can come to our courts to complain about it,” Yagman says. “It also shows me what I looked like when I was a young guy, and I like looking at that.”

Although Robles says he is trying to find more work in the fine arts field, he talks about his courtroom gigs with the feeling of a natural journalist. “The beauty of doing it is the adrenaline,” he says, recalling moments of panic when unfinished drawings were snatched out of his hands by reporters on deadline. “Before you know it, it’s on a satellite and being seen all around the world.”