Back in Court ... as an Artist, NOT Defendant!

I got to do another courtroom artist gig with WLOS on Friday.  Wanda Greene is the former County Manager for Buncombe County, NC.  She and her son Michael have been under investigation by the FBI for misappropriation of county funds, and on Friday, they were arraigned in federal court.  The case is a Big Deal in these parts and a great many people have been following it closely.

WLOS called me early in the week to ask if I was available.  Courtroom sessions are fun, so I made myself available, and hooked up with the reporters (Aaron Adelson and Lauren Brigman) and cameramen outside the building Friday morning.  They professionally ambushed the two defendants as they arrived with their attorneys.  A bit later, we went into the building to get situated in the courtroom.

When I arrived, another case was wrapping up.  Seating was almost non-existent, so I stood for a few minutes trying to decide what to do.  Then the judge basically told me to sit down, and the only place available was right next to Wanda Greene.  Her attorney came in a couple of minutes later and sat on the other side of me.  So there I was, drawing materials in my lap, sitting right between the defendant and her attorney!  Awwwkkwaaaaarddd!

Then the first case was over and we all repositioned ourselves.  I wound up in one of the seats in the jury box.  It was great for getting drawings of Wanda, her attorney, and the judge, but Michael was on the far side of them and all I could see was the top of his head.  Time to get to work!

As it turned out, I had more than enough time to get the drawings done.  The judge is a very methodical guy and is known for reading every bit of an indictment.  This time, reading every bit meant reading every item that Wanda and Michael (allegedly) purchased with county funds.  Every item.  Every item on a list 38 pages long.

Every.

Single.

Item.

It took an hour and 45 minutes.

Wanda and Michael (allegedly) didn't spend the money on big-ticket items.  It read like anybody's shopping lists for a period of many years: pizza, a Far Side book, paper towels, lingerie from Walmart, a couple of iPhones, some thumb drives, and so on.  You'd think that if somebody was going to risk their careers by embezzling, they'd go for the gold: Cartier wristwatches, Mercedes cars, trips to Monte Carlo, things like that.  Nope.  Walmart stuff.

So here are the drawings that I produced for WLOS:

The Judge

Wanda Greene and her attorney

Michael Greene

 In Court

Don't know if I'll be called back when the trial actually begins.  We'll see.  The saga continues ...

More Courtroom Drawings

I spent Tuesday sitting in court again. The state of North Carolina is suing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) over pollution from its coal-fired power plants. The trial is being held in the federal court here in Asheville. Our local TV station, WLOS, asked me to give them some images of the principal characters, which in this case are the attorneys. So here they are:

Judge Lacy Thornburg is presiding over the case. He's been a legal heavyweight in NC for many years, including a stint as the Attorney General.

Here's the NC team (left to right): Jim Gulick, Marc Bernstein, Anne Lynch, and lead attorney Mike Goodstein.

This is the TVA team (left to right): lead attorney Frank Lancaster, Maria Gillian, Harriety Cooper, and Thomas Fine.

Since there's no jury in this trial, Judge Thornburg graciously let me sit in the jury box so I could get these drawings.

The day I attended the trial, there was only one witness all day. He was an expert witness for North Carolina. He had two points to make: (1) TVA could have put pollution control measures in place anytime it wanted in the past and still can, and (2) the expert witness for TVA is an idiot. Everything else he said was a variation on those two themes. There. I just saved you 8 hours of listening to expert testimony.

Other Courtroom Artist Links

I was doing a bit of research this afternoon about courtroom artists. Okay, it may seem a bit after-the-fact, since the trial I was working finished over a week ago. But I learned a lot during that trial and am now able to look at other artists' courtroom work with new eyes. Sometimes I wonder "how the hell did they do that?". Other times it's "wow, that's pretty good". And in a few cases, I wonder how they can even post it on the web. (I haven't listed those artists here!) Still, it's all a learning experience.

Ironic Sans is a blogsite that has an interesting entry for March 4, 2008. He contacted seven courtroom artists about what they do when they're not doing court stuff. It's a good read with samples of all the artists' work, and it has links to all their web sites. They are:
- Mona Edwards. She was a fashion designer, which gives her drawings a spareness that adds to their punch.
- Steve Werblun. He has an excellent ability to get a likeness. Interesting (for me, anyway) is that he draws with markers. I dunno how that's done, but I'm determined to find out.
- Marilyn Church. She works in pastel on toned paper. I tried this approach and it did not, repeat did not, work for me, but she does it very well.
- Patrick Flynn. He also works in pastel on toned paper. His figures are much more simplified than Marilyn's, almost stylized.
- Dana Verkouteren. She lives and works in DC, covering mainly the Supreme Court but also other cases. Her drawings are much more finished than I tried to do, and she works in colored pencils.
- Paulette Frankl. Her works are very dramatic, actually leaning more toward fine art (particularly German expressionism) than typical courtroom illustration.
- Art Lien. Like Dana, he lives and works in Washington, DC. He has a wonderfully loose style while still finishing the works to a high standard. His website is really a blog, and an interesting read.

In addition to these artists, there are a number of others that I've found or been pointed to:
- Bill Robles. He has covered every major trial in LA since the Manson case. His drawings are exceptionally well done -of all the courtroom artists I've found, he's the one I like the most. His website doesn't have much information nor very many drawings - you'll have to do a Google search to find more.
- Mary Chaney. She covered trials in the LA area with excellent drawings and dramatic colorings. The website refers to her in the past tense, though, and I couldn't find any information about that.
- Susan Schary. Susan's in the Philadelphia area and works in pastel on full-sheet (18x22) toned paper. How she does that is beyond me - I work on quarter-sheet watercolor paper (about 11x15).
- Vicki Behringer. Another LA artist, Vicki has a good ability to capture a likeness. Like me, she works in watercolor.

Courtroom Artist Follow-Up

Judge Thomas Ellis.

Witness on the stand.

A former video poker machine operator who had over $1.7M in cash hidden at his house.

The prosecuting attorneys, Richard Edwards and Corey Ellis.

The trial that I was working as a courtroom artist is over. Former sheriff Bobby Medford and former "captain" Guy Penland (he was really an unpaid volunteer) were convicted of ten counts each of charges related to skimming protection money from illegal video poker machines. It wasn't even a close decision: after two weeks of testimony, the jury only needed two hours to reach a decision.


From my end, this was a good gig. I was working for WLOS TV, the local Asheville station, as their courtroom artist. I was in the court every day, drawing the defendents, lawyers, prosecutors, judge, and witnesses. At 11 every morning, I'd scoot out to the van and hit the drawings with watercolors. This would give the cameraman time to shoot the pictures and edit them into the narrative for the noon news show. Then I'd go back inside and work until they broke for lunch. In the afternoon, I was out of there at 4 to prep the drawings for the afternoon show. Occasionally I played "cub reporter" and took notes for the real reporter who was prepping the broadcast or doing the live stand-up.


From the drawing perspective, there was a huge difference in the stuff I did in the first few days and the stuff I did in the last. The first ones look like amateur scribblings (at least, they do to me), while the last ones are at least acceptable. There's still a lot of room for improvement, of course, and the Big Guys in LA, New York, Chicago, or Atlanta probably have nothing to fear from me. But that's fine. This kind of work is fun and pays the bills.


I had a great time working with the WLOS reporters and the cameramen. They were all smart, personable, fun to work with, funny, and extremely professional. Asheville may be a small market, but it doesn't mean the news crews aren't pros.


I would like to do some more courtroom art, but there's not much demand for that here. WLOS only needs me about once every 12-18 months. I'll prep some brochures, samples, and letters and send 'em out to some of the other news stations in a reasonable radius: Knoxville, Chattanooga, Greenville-Spartanburg, Winston-Salem, and see if there's any interest out there. My paintings are still my #1 priority, but courtroom art might be a good sideline.


All the above sounds a bit mercenary, doesn't it? Well, it is. I had mixed personal feelings during the Medford trial. Bobby Medford is in terrible health and I couldn't help but feel sorry for the pain he was obviously in. And Guy Penland looks like everybody's doting, friendly grandfather. But listening to the testimony painted a very different picture: these guys had no compunction about shaking down crooks for "protection" money and violating the trust that the public had put in them. And if that wasn't bad enough, I heard some horrible stories about run-ins that other people had with Medford and his crew that have not been, and never will be, examined by the public. So good riddance, Bobby and Guy.

Behind the Courtroom Scenes

This past week has been a stinker. I've been going non-stop from early morning to rack time and haven't been able to post any blogs ... or do laundry, or cut the grass, clean the car, or almost anything else. So today I'm in catch-up mode.

I've got some more courtroom drawings to post, but I've gotta get 'em out of my camera first, so they'll come later. Thought I'd share some impressions from a week in the courtroom.

First, it's not at all like Law & Order. No big surprises, no theatrics, no stomping around, no yelling (well, one time when there was an old guy who was hard of hearing, so the attorneys literally had to stand next to him and slowly shout their questions ... quite amusing, but not L&O stuff). All the attorneys for both sides know pretty much exactly what the others are going to ask. It's really a matter of "here's one side, here's the other, now you in the jury make your decision".

Another discovery for me: big issues can hide in small comments. Again, in L&O, key facts are emphasized with much over-acting. In real life, they can come out in just a bland reading of a list. The prosecutors had a witness on the stand on Day 2 asking him what various markings on a list meant, and in a quiet matter-of-fact tone he implicated two local sheriffs in taking money from illegal video poker machine operations. And neither set of attorneys made a big deal of it. Meanwhile, I'm sitting back there in the second row thinking "wait a minute, did I just hear what I think I heard??" You really have to pay attention - you snooze, you lose.

Our judge, Thomas Ellis is quite interesting. See his Wikipedia entry here. He's a high-profile guy brought in from the DC area just for this trial. He took charge of his courtroom from the very first minute. Judge Ellis much more intrusive into questioning than anything you've seen on TV (with the exception of Judge Judy, who's just damn intrusive, period). If he doesn't like an attorney's question, he'll jump in and rephrase it, or ask his own questions if the attorney isn't covering something he thinks should be covered. Sometimes he looks like he's asleep, then all of a sudden he'll pounce on a comment or question from an attorney. The "sleep" look is deceptive: he's really concentrating his rather formidable intellect on the matter at hand. But he's also interested in getting a fair trial. We already know his thoughts on whether the defendents are guilty or innocent, but he goes to extreme lengths to make sure the jury doesn't. All his personal opinions are discussed outside the jury's hearing.

One of the things that this case has pounded home to me is just how fair our legal system is. Yes, it's big and convoluted, but it's a system of laws and court decisions that have been carefully crafted over two hundred years, mostly by people who put sound decisions above all. There aren't any arbitrary decisions allowed ... if anything is questionable, it can be appealed or the case can even be retried, and none of them want that. Nope, our system is, especially in this particular case, a good system being correctly used by some very smart and dedicated people.

As a courtroom artist, I'm just a small wienie in this story. I get there a few minutes early and take a seat in the second row on the right side (the first row is reserved for attorneys and others involved). This way I can get the best look at the witness stand, judge, and defense attorneys. As for the prosecutors, it seems no matter where I sit, all I get are their backs, so I try to work on them during breaks.

I only take in a small drawing board, a small stack of hot-pressed watercolor paper, my drawing tools (a mechanical pencil with a very soft lead and also a kneaded eraser), and a small sketch pad for notes. During the proceedings, I work on getting a decent drawing. I try to get the best likeness possible, while also trying to breathe some life into the figures by tilting the heads, having them look this way or that, lean on an arm, whatever. Sometimes I'll just focus on one large figure, sometimes two or three. When I do a "scene", I'll compress the key elements. For example, in reality the witness stand is way over to the right while the defense table is way over to the left, the judge is in the middle, and the flag is way back in the background. When I draw them, I'll cram 'em all together. This is the only way to get all the important stuff recognizably visible.

At 11 a.m., I leave, even if something's still happening. I head out to the TV station's van and break out my watercolors. I'll normally have two or three drawings going, and will work fast on getting the color laid in. In the past, I've used pastels (way too messy and complicated) and watercolor pencils (too uncontrollable and deceptive). Regular watercolors work best for me. I need to have the drawings done by 11:30 so that the cameraman can shoot them and then splice all the images together with the reporter's narrative for the noon news show. Then it's back into the courtroom until the lunch break. In the afternoon, it's the same routine, and I have to get back to the TV van about 4 pm so we can be ready for the evening news.

The reporter and I work closely on what we're going to cover. Not every witness needs to be mentioned; sometimes we don't know that until after the fact. So I have to draw every witness and then we determine which ones to focus on back at the van. We also compare notes on what we heard to make sure we're getting our story straight.

I discovered last night that one of our cameramen, Joe Avery, has his own blog, which you can see here. He wrote about his experience of working with me and included a couple of photos. Well, let me tell you, these cameramen are an amazing bunch. They don't just stand around and shoot video all day. They're the ones that put the piece together. The reporter writes up the story and records the audio. The cameraman takes the audio and matches up all the different video shots to the appropriate sections. There may be a dozen different shots. So he's playing his equipment like a madman, swapping tapes in and out, running the story over and over, pounding buttons, and looking remarkably like a mad scientist in a Grade B movie dungeon. Except he's for real. Once the story's done, he and the reporter get ready and do the live stand-up intro and closing for the evening news. Cool stuff, a lot of fun to watch, and even more fun to be a part of.

More Courtroom Art

Defense attorneys cross-examining a witness.

These are the DA's case files ... all eight crates of them ...

The defendents, former Captain Guy Penland (left) and former Sheriff Bobby Medford (right).

The DA's questioning a witness.

Courtroom Artist Again

This past week has been busy. I've been working with our local TV station, WLOS, in covering the trial of Bobby Medford. He's a former sheriff who's been charged with extortion, mail fraud, and other activities related to skimming money from illegal video poker machine operations. Monday and Tuesday were devoted to jury selection and the rest of the week to the prosecution's case. Frankly, it looks like it might go on for a month. But for me, it's fun: sitting in court, working fast, trying to get a likeness that has some character to it, and dealing with all the difficulties of having to sit behind my subjects. I've been working on hot-pressed watercolor paper, doing the drawings with a soft-lead mechanical pencil. About an hour before the scheduled newscast, I go out to the station's van and lay in the watercolor washes. When they're done, the cameraman shoots them and then splices the news report together. Then I take my drawings and go home. Yes, I keep the drawings, they get to show 'em on TV.

Here are some of the drawings I've done so far:

Back in Court

I was back in court today, working for WLOS as a courtroom artist. Today three of the four primary defendents were formally read the charges, pled "not guilty", and requested a jury trial. The news teams all thought it would be over pretty quick, a 10-min process for each one. NOT! The first one, Bobby Medford, went for about an hour and a half. The next two were considerably quicker, about 45 min each. Fortunately for me, the judge allowed me and the other artist (for the local newspaper) to sit in the jury box, so we had good views of all the principals. Here are a few of the drawings that made it onto the evening news:

This is Bobby Medford (center), the former Sheriff, along with two of his attorneys.

Johnny Harrison (right), a former police lieutenant ...

"Butch" Davis (right), another former police lieutenant.

I've used pastels in court before, but this time decided to go with watercolor. I'm better with a pen and pencil than I am with pastel, and you gotta have all your pastels out, which is a hassle. So I worked on getting a reasonably good drawing in the courtroom, then went outside and laid on the watercolor.

Oh, and today's outcome? All three remain in jail without bail. The judge said that, since they were police officers when these crimes were committed, he couldn't give them any restriction that they hadn't already violated. So in the slammer they go. The trials will probably occur around the March timeframe.

Courtroom Artist

On Thursday, I got a call from our WLOS, our local ABC TV station, asking me if I could be their courtroom artist that afternoon. I've worked with them before as a courtroom artist and it has always been interesting. This time was no exception.

Bobby Medford, the former Sheriff of Buncombe County (where Asheville is located) was arrested that morning and indicted on multiple counts of extortion, involvement in illegal poker machine gambling, using law enforcement officers to collect protection money, and some other things. This is a really big deal around here - he was just defeated in his re-election bid last year and was a pretty popular sheriff. But he's also got some other investigations against him that are working their way along, such as a lot of missing stuff from the evidence locker. So he's facing a world of trouble.

Thursday afternoon was his first appearance in federal court. He and a number of co-defendents were basically told of the charges against them and then whisked off to jail for the weekend. The reporter and I were in the peanut gallery - she was listening to the proceedings and I was madly sketching away. Unfortunately for me, the judge wouldn't let me sit in the jury box this time and instead ordered me into the fourth row! Bummer. About all I got to see was the back of the defendents' heads. But I got some sketches done and, when the proceedings were over, went outside and sharpened them up with watercolor. They came out fairly reasonably well. Sorry I can't post any images right now as WLOS has the drawings, but I might be able to get some soon.

On Monday morning, we're back in court again. This time they'll do the formal "here's the charges, how do you plead?" "Innocent, your honor." "Fine. Court date is (fill in a date here). Next." He'll probably be there ten minutes.

It's an interesting feeling, being a courtroom artist. One part is the kinda gleeful voyeurism that we all experience watching Judge Judy or whatever. On the professional side, I've gotta draw like a madman to try to get some images that can be used for the upcoming news report, so I can't really listen to what's being said. The subjects are always moving around, people are getting in the way, and I can only see the backs of their heads. And then there's the "vulture" factor: here are all the reporters inside and cameramen outside who are scrambling to get something on the accused and their lawyers that they can use in a report. Get one of the principals in the case out on the street and he/she will have a crowd of cameramen and reporters moving right along with 'em. That part is very comical.

So on Monday, I'll be back in court. And then again sometime next year, I'll probably be there for the actual case. I'll try to post some of the drawings here when I can.