The Art of Judicial Sketches

Feature image: Helter Skelter in the Courtroom via DeMilked

Artists involved in judiciary proceedings toe the line daily between art providing people glimpses of court proceedings they might otherwise not have access to and weaponizing the arts against those being prosecuted. Judicial sketch art represents the fleeting experience of someone’s most vulnerable moments in their life, from the origins and intersections to an investigation of style, the artistry, and the nuance behind it all.

Before cameras, nobody thought about what a high-profile case was. Judicial sketches stretch back to the mid-1800s when the rise of photography made people think about all the places a camera couldn’t go that they wanted to see. This created a divide between the legal system and the people it was designed to serve, so artists went to courtrooms to draw what they saw.

The First recorded use of a judicial sketch artist was for the trial of John Brown in 1859. John Brown was an abolitionist who raided a federal armory with the intention of inciting a slave rebellion. He was charged with treason and executed. Columbia Law School Professor Robert Fergeson said in his paper on the “Story and Transcription in the Trial of John Brown” that his trial was one of the first to receive intense media attention amid the rise of cameras in the 19th century. Sketch artists attended these court proceedings, including his execution, taking space from their lives to hand-pick some of his final moments to illustrate. 

When people started wanting to know about essential news cases, people began talking about them more and more. Newsrooms noticed this and wanted to follow this new “trend.” They started asking for media permissions for these pieces, mainly as they covered more high-profile trials. As a result, these images secured legal proceedings as front-page news.

The most prominent reason photographers could not be inside courtrooms did not require a law or regulation; the technology needed to be better, and the horrid shutter speed did not work for the courts. Early cameras required long exposure times during the rise of photography that a court in session could not accommodate. In these cases, the jury and the crowd would often be still, and the prosecution and defense would be moving around quite a lot, so the cameras could only capture the opposite of their intentions. So sketch art in judicial proceedings was not only a response to legal restrictions in the courtroom but also an adaptation for and a product of technological shortcomings in the 1800s. As cameras improved and the technological barriers associated with early snapshots vanished, the restrictions remained in place. Cameras were still only sometimes allowed in many courtrooms. 

The 1994 OJ Simpson Trial used courtroom sketches for most of the trial, even though TV cameras were allowed. Sketch artist Bill Robles told The US Sun that the courtroom was incredibly ‘tense’ and the emotions within those rooms are impossible not to get overwhelmed with. The sketches from this trial from 1994-1995 depicted many key moments, from his interactions with his defense team to audience reactions to crucial information. Of course, they even sketched the minutes-long battle between Simpson and a glove. OJ Simpson was acquitted of his ex-wife’s murder and her friend, Ronald Goldman. However, with such a high-profile case and a packed courtroom, there’s always a chance that “whoever did it” might have made it into one of the sketches. 

While sketch artists for OJ Simpson’s trial provided an otherwise vulnerable perspective of such a widely publicized court case, other sketch artists deployed themselves to tackle the adaptive challenge of adhering to federal regulations. This was the case for United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006 , where the “20th hijacker” of the September 11th attacks faced the federal court. Federal courts prohibited the use of film and photography inside the courtrooms, so sketch artists attended to depict scenes from the trial. They showed him interacting with his defense team. He was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the terrorist attacks. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

“When the cameras aren't allowed, we’re king,” Judicial sketch artist Bill Robles said in a 2015 interview with NBC4 News.

Judicial sketch art has developed a technique and style over the hundreds of years it’s been implemented in courtrooms. The in-court work involves providing the subject as much detail as possible, whereas the surrounding people do not get as much attention. In the scenes, they are like extras in a true crime TV show.

Much of the courtroom sketch style uses similar techniques to impressionism. Both seek to catch glimpses of fleeting moments to illustrate for the masses, but their scenes highlight technical differences. Courtroom sketches tend to take on a rushed, jagged look as they create as many scenes as possible for the public to see. Impressionists caught fleeting moments of quaint, still life, and the flow of their brushstrokes reflects that same relaxed feeling in their work. 

However, some artists will still focus on them occasionally to hone in on how attendees reacted to particular testimonies and closing arguments. Here, their purpose was to remind viewers (or readers of the accompanying newspaper) that creating these drawings is as inherently human as the experience of sitting in the courtroom and hearing the arguments in real-time.

While not used as widely today, courtroom sketch art is still a testament to the human side of technological innovation and judicial deliberation. Art’s humanity is a small reflection of the raw emotion experienced in courtrooms. It is a snapshot of some people’s most vulnerable moments, whether they sit as defendants or testify against them. Even in an age where cameras are more capable than ever before, there is still a deep appreciation and a high demand for sketch artists when covering trials today. While the realism of photography provides a clear picture of a single moment, it is merely a distanced version of a very human experience, the only interaction with the moment being a single push of a button, one snapshot. Judicial sketch art allows us to appreciate the skills of these artists by immersing ourselves in the moments they selected to show us. We don’t see those illustrations simply because they were part of a batch on an SD card that someone could get—it’s a moment from a trial someone wanted us to see. We don’t always want to see a case from someone’s lens; we want to see it from someone’s perspective. 

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