The Illustrated Courtroom:
50+ Years of Courtroom Art

Court artists go where cameras can’t and The Illustrated Courtroom includes approximately 150 illustrations of memorable trial moments along with five top artists’ insider insights. They were in court for the trials of a host of colorful characters: Jack Ruby (who killed President Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald), the New York Black Panthers, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, Charles Manson, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst and more recent newsmakers like Bernard Madoff and would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad.

My co-author Elizabeth Williams drew Shahzad as he was being sentenced to life without parole in Manhattan’s federal court in 2010. Not her first terrorist, by the way. Elizabeth, who is also a terrifc illustrator, began her professional life as a fashion illustrator before segueing into courtroom art. Her inspiration for the career change and mentor was another of our five artists, Emmy-nominee Bill Robles. When he could be relaxing, Bill is still out there covering many of the big cases of the day and racking up some frequent flyer miles covering mass murderer James Holmes’ court hearings in Colorado.

Aggie Kenny is a wonder—she somehow manages to create wonderful watercolors while working in incredibly tight spaces. Aggie won an Emmy for her Watergate-era work at the trial of former U.S. attorney general John N Mitchell and President Nixon’s former secretary of commerce Maurice Stans, for financial malfeasance.

Sadly, our two remaining artists, Richard Tomlinson and Howard Brodie, passed away in 2010. I wish Richard had been around to see his great work—in a style all his own—memorialized in this book. As for Howard Brodie, the phrase, “they don’t make them like that anymore,” could have been coined for him. I was honored to meet and interview him at his home in central California in 2005. Howard began drawing the action on battlefields then covered sporting events and ultimately major trials. Walter Cronkite, with whom Howard often worked for CBS, coined the term “artist-correspondent” especially for him.

The Illustrated Courtroom blog