Half-Assed Courtroom Sketches From My Time as a Juror in Los Angeles County

I came across these drawings while looking for old art I could post up on the blog. This is what I found. These 4 pages represent, in their entirety, all of my notes from the trial I was a juror on back in July and August of 2003. The case involved the band Chicago: their old producer was suing them over the proceeds of their entire backlist to Rhino Records. A lot of deadly dull contractual litigation was pored over by both sets of lawyers during the 3 weeks of trial, so when I was bored, I drew some of the participants of the trial. Seeing these drawings again now helps refresh my memory of these people almost the way a photograph would -- that's not to say these drawings are in any way photo-realistic, only that the act of drawing these people seemed to help me store clearer memories of them. Anyway, they were fun to look at again.

On this first page, the big face that takes up most of the page is not based on any particular person -- the smaller head is of an analyst, possibly a writer, for Billboard Magazine. He was interesting for about 3 minutes, so he got drawn. (As for that list on the left side of the page, I have no idea.)



On this second page, I've drawn the two attorneys for the plaintiff. They were pitiable characters. There was the ferret-faced lawyer (top right -- and he looked just like that), and then the aging lead attorney (two versions of the same guy on the top and bottom left). You kind of felt bad for them. So when the slick, LA Law-looking lawyers for Chicago leveled the charge that the plaintiff, Guercio, had pitched his case to every law firm in town and Mr. Aged and Mr. Ferret were the best he could find, I think it carried a lot of weight. They really looked like desperate lawyers, hoping for some kind of break.

This third page is mostly notes, but the drawing is of a lawyer named Emily Simon. She got $130,000 for looking over the contracts. I couldn't get over that. Thusly, I drew her holding fistfuls of cash and looking both greedy and insane, or, as I wrote next to the drawing, "money crazy". She seemed like a nice enough person when I met her after the trial, however.

At the bottom of this last page is a pretty good likeness of the only member of Chicago to show up for the trial. Walter Parazaider. I think he was the saxophonist. After the trial was over, I talked to Walter and found him to be just as nice a guy as we all thought he was from his time on the witness stand. He came across as very down-to-earth. When his attorney asked Parazaider what the record label thought of Chicago's final effort, and album called Stone of Sisyphus, Parazaider said, with no hesitation or apparent angst, "Oh, they hated it." It was almost as though he secretly knew, as we all did, that anything produced by the remnants of the band Chicago called Stone of Sisyphus could only inspire hate.

Anyway, thought I'd post up some of the odd stuff I've got hidden in my filing cabinet. Have a great weekend, er'rybody.