99% Invisible - 539- Courtroom Sketch

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

As electronic news gathering was gaining prominence in the early 20th century, the American Bar Association began to fear its effect on court trials and adopted something called Canon 35. This condemned the use of photography, motion picture, and radio recording within the confines of the courtroom. It wasn't a law, per se, but a code of ethics that cautioned against recording technology in the trial process. Many state and federal courts followed suit...making way for illustrators. Cameras began to creep their way back into courtrooms over the decades, but courtroom artists are still constantly used in high profile cases.Courtroom Sketch

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Earlier this year, the city of New York closed off several blocks around the Manhattan criminal courthouse. Instead of early morning commuters, the sidewalks around the building were flooded with reporters, photographers, and camera people. They were there to capture the arrangement of former President Donald Trump. Members of the media were so desperate to get a good shot that they camped out overnight outside the courthouse, and it's because people all over the world

demanded an immediate visual record of this historic moment. Viewers were hoping to watch Trump's perp walk into the courtroom or see his mugshot, or see a video of him being read his felony charges, and said the image that was everywhere, from the guardian to the Washington Post, even the cover of the New Yorker. That image was a hand-drawn courtroom sketch. I cannot stress to you how much I really, really, really did not want to begin this episode talking about Donald Trump. But this was a really great sketch.

Producer Vivienne Leigh. The sketch was done by a New York-based artist named Jane Rosenberg. She portrayed Trump at a three-quarter profile, his arms crossed in a defiant manner. Somehow Rosenberg managed to portrayed Trump at a three-quarter profile, his arms crossed in a defiant manner. Somehow Rosenberg managed to perfectly encapsulate his hair with just a few messy strokes of an oil pastel. His face was frozen in a deep cutting scale, emanating what I can only describe as sour-puss energy. I've always found court-room art fascinating. When I look at a sketch, it doesn't feel like I'm looking at a moment frozen in time.

It feels like I'm looking at a memory of a moment, like I'm seeing it through the artist's eyes and watching the gears turning in their brain. I was in love with it from the very beginning. It's always different. It's emotional. I carry around stories with me, you know, in my head for months and months. This is Mona Schaefer Edwards, a quarter-marthist based in Los Angeles. It's very satisfying to see justice being done and to have the historical presence and to watch history unfold.

So I have covered some of the most important trials in American history in the last 35, 40 years. She's drawn a ton of big cases. Michael Jackson, the Night Stalker, Harvey Weinstein. I can imagine LA is you get a lot of work. I'm right with disaster. Yes, is get a lot of work. I live with disaster, yes, I get a lot of work. But I think the most fascinating thing to me about courtroom illustration is that it still exists.

Because you can't really talk about courtroom illustration without addressing the elephant not in the room. Photography. What can a really good, or a illustrator do that a photographer can't do, like specifically? Like what was your edge? I can't compete with photography. You know, I'm not going to justify what I do. I can't compete with the camera. Next to a camera, pastel on paper feels like an archaic way of documenting some of the most important legal events

of our time. Cameras are faster, easier, and more accurate than a human illustrator. But for some reason, courtroom artists are still constantly used in high-profile cases. The answer to how courtroom artists have managed to survive the camera for so long is wrapped up in a decades-long tug of war between transparency and integrity in the courts.

It's a nearly-century long battle that centers around the question of whether it's even possible to observe the justice system without changing the course of justice. It's attention that came to a head for the first time in 1932. Tum-tum. We've always been big on crime in America, Vivian. This is Tom Astority, author of a book called Little Lindy's Kidnapped, which focuses entirely on the media coverage surrounding the kidnapping and grizzly murder of the infant son of Charles

Lindbergh. Lindbergh's reputation has since tarnished because of his isolationist views and his political sympathies. Not see. But at the time, Lindbergh was one of the most well-known and most well-respected men in the country, when tragedy struck. On the night of March 1st, 1932, and there are a state in Hopewell, New Jersey, someone comes in to the second floor nursery,

climbs up on the ladder, goes into the baby's nursery, and takes him away that night. Not a single bed is overlooked. Not a single suspicion unverified in the search for the most famous baby in the world. Innocent, 20-month-old son of the lone eagle. And the kidnapper leaves a note, demanding $50,000 in ransom. Sadly, the limberg son was never recovered alive.

The child's body was discovered less than five miles from the limberg home, and police later charged a German-born immigrant named Bruno Richard Helpman with the murder. And then, on January 2nd, 1935, the crime of the century gives way to the trial of the century. Everyone wanted to taste it this story, and the press was more than happy to provide that access. About 700 reporters, photographers, and camera operators descended upon New Jersey were helped men with standing trial.

Oh, there's a media scrum. Yeah. Look at this scene. A courtroom self-packed that is not an inch of space available, while excited, chatter, and bars filled the air. At this time, motion picture cameras, which had only recently entered the courtroom, were these clunky masses of metal that took up a lot of space and made a worrying noise. And even still photographers weren't subtle. You know, still photographer.

I had those old-fashioned light bulbs in their camera that to give you the flash and the reporters that take the bulb out of the light and then toss it on the floor where to make a popping sound. So that could be quite intrusive. The judge was concerned about all the distraction photographers and camera reels would have. So he strictly forbade any photography or motion picture captured during the course of the

trial. Camera operators were only to capture the moments before court was in session and after. The newsreels promise him, on their honor, that the newsreel camera they have in the balcony of the courtroom will only be turned on when people aren't on the stand doing actual testimony. Believe it or not, they didn't do that. During the dramatic cross-examination between Bruno Gritjud helpman, the accused kidnapped murderer, and David T. Wollentz, the prosecutor, when they're having this really vociferous

confrontation. During that moment, I think if you or I were a newsreel guy, we might have done the same thing, which is we betray the judge, turn on our cameras and record the actual confrontation on film. During this rapid cross-examination, Halftman admits to having lied to police on the stand. Think you lied to Lord, did you tell the truth?

I said nothing to Lord. Good luck! I did, yes. Yeah. stand. Shortly after Helmines questioning the news reel footage of his interrogation spread quickly, playing two packed movie houses around New York City. Eager Patrons lined up around the block to watch the bombastic courtroom scene. The public saw everybody in America's riled up and when the jury finally goes in to deliberate the case, there are packs of people around the courthouse and the mob starts to get a little unruly and disruptive

as the jury deliberation goes on for a few hours longer than most people thought it should have gone on and they start screaming, kill the German, kill Haltenmann. A rock goes through the window with a courthouse. But the jury returns its verdict. Bruno Haltenmann was found guilty and was sentenced to death by electric chair. Although it's unclear how much, or even if the leaked footage had any impact on the verdict, the world was appalled by the carnival-like atmosphere that the press had created during the trial.

Many in the judicial system believed that the presence of photographers, newsreels, and other journalists made a complete mockery of the court. I think the prime argument you might make is a baby has been murdered and we want to see justice done. And of course, we want to give the accused proper due process and we don't want to allow anything to sort of interject itself into what at its best is really a solemn process, a democratic process, one in which we, I think, genuinely want to see justice done. They were also arguments that cameras didn't just tarnish the solemnity of the courtroom process, they could possibly interfere with our constitutional right to a fair trial. After all, how could a trial

be fair with all of this outside passion and influence brought into the courtroom? So in direct response to the Helpman trial, the American Bar Association adopted something called Canon 35. Canon 35 condemned the use of photography, motion picture, and radio recording within the confines of the courtroom. It wasn't a law per se, but a code of ethics

that cautioned against recording technology in the trial process. In many states adopted that policy. In 1946, the US government went even further and expressly banned all cameras from federal courts. And so starving sketch artists are the people that really, I think benefit from this from Canon 35. The rise of the courtroom artist was also driven

in part by television. By the 1960s, television had become a staple in most American households. Nightly TV news programs were evolving to cover the big events of the day, and there's more demand than ever to see inside high-profile court cases. But with no cameras allowed in, the courtroom was a visual black box. So television networks decided that allowing artists into the courtroom was an acceptable loophole that would follow the spirit of Canon 35 while still giving the public a peak inside the court.

One of the first people to sketch a trial for television was a man named Howard Brody. Brody was hired by the CBS Evening News in 1964 to create the visuals for the trial of Jack Ruby, the man convicted of killing Lee Harvey Allswald. Other networks followed suit and began teaming up with artists in the courtroom. Rudy's work turned courtroom illustration into a real job and broke open the profession for a number of other aspiring artists. He had completed a major, major murder trial and I saw those drawings and was just so mesmerized, I knew somehow that

I could do the same thing. This is Pat Lopez, she's an artist based in New Mexico. After Pat saw those Howard Brody drawings on CBS, she called up a producer at her local news station and scored a meeting. So I ran to the station, he had me draw the noon anchor as he was giving the news right in front of him and then he said said and you walked in off the street I said yes sir Because they needed a courtroom artist for the following Monday

So that was my first ever challenge and I guess I passed the test because I've been doing it ever since Path's been doing courtroom illustration since the 1970s, and has created the courtroom sketches for trials like Enron, the Matthew Shepherd murder trial, and the Oklahoma City bomber. She says that part of the reason that courtroom artist took off is that they didn't carry the same baggage as photographers. Everyone knows when the cameras in the courtroom,

but you've got someone like me sitting on the front row quietly sketching, you know, no one really knows what I'm doing, they can really knows what I'm doing. They can't see what I'm doing. Unlike a photographer holding up a camera, a sketch artist has the ability to quietly blend into the room. No one was worried that the trial participants would become distracted, or that witnesses would feel too intimidated to testify, or that jurors would be fearful that their privacy

would be at stake. This is what the judges wanted was some kind of protection for the people in court. To protect justice, I think, that they looked at court-room art as the safest way to do this. Artists like Pat are usually hired directly by a television network in order to cover high-profile cases for broadcast. It's an incredibly high-pressure job. You need to work accurately and just as important, you need to work quickly. There are tons of fabulous illustrators,

but there are very, very few people who can look at a scene and get it down in five minutes, ten minutes, 20 minutes, and tell the story that fast. This is artist Mona Schaefer Edwards again. I know what I need to do. We wait for that fast. This is artist Mona Schaefer Edwards again. I know what I need to do. We wait for that moment. I'm sure every illustrator will do the same thing. You wait for the aha moment. I mean, that's, you know, somebody collapsing or screaming or gesturing or jumping over a table to try and strangles someone. I mean, that's, that's like gold." One of my favorite pieces of courtroom art is from another illustrator named Bill Robles.

He documented the trial of Charles Manson, and at one point, Manson became so agitated that he lunged across the courtroom to attack the judge. Manson had his arms outstretched, while a bailiff tackled him around the waist. Robles had just a split second to scratch out the frantic scene using a pen and markers. Stylistically, it almost looks like an illustration from a deranged, rolled doll book. There was a moment in federal court, Y.D. Bulger, who was a bad guy, and he saw me sketching him.

Now, he was behind glass, so he was far away from me. But he saw me sketching him. Now we were behind. He was behind glass. So he was far away from me. But he saw me sketching him. And he looked at me and he smiled and he pointed at me and wagged his finger. Like no, don't do that. And even though he was, I don't know, I'm gonna say 15 feet away, 10 feet away, and behind glass, he really scared me. Pat Lopez told me that she's also seen a lot of difficult things throughout the course of her career.

The energy in the courtroom was really, really dark at times. The people coming into the court had so much grief and energy of hate and energy of revenge and for many of these trials that have an artist in there to create the scene in the court as to what happened. That's so much easier. The courtroom is notoriously a place where people experience the worst days of their lives. One thing that Pat sees her work and the work of other sketch artists doing is communicating the story of a trial while sidestepping any extra layer of tension that cameras might bring along with them into the courtroom. But not everyone is satisfied with the curated calm of a courtroom sketch. Proponents of

cameras in courtrooms think that the public shouldn't have to rely on being told what was happening in a court of law they should be able to see it in action for themselves. If you're presiding over literally life and death for people, I think you have to be prepared to be subject to that degree of public scrutiny. This is Jane Kertley, still hot professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. She's been a long time advocate for the expansion of camera access in courtrooms. To me, the fundamental question is, how can the public trust what's going on

in the courtroom if they don't know what's happening? And if what's happening there is not what we as a society want to have happen, then the public should be able to know that and should be able to take steps to rectify that situation. Keeping them out only makes the situation worse and makes the system less accountable. From the beginning, Canon 35 was more of a strongly worded suggestion than a law. By the 1960s, three decades after Canon 35, new sensibilities started to erode the

wall erected against cameras in the courtroom. Those who were pushing for cameras argued that they offered increased oversight of the justice system. Meanwhile, television and photojournalists were making the case that with their quieter, modern camera technology, their presence was now just as unobtrusive as the discrete courtroom artist. Far from being intimidated, witnesses and lawyers would barely notice the cameras were there. Media advocates also believed that televising trials offered a great educational resource for people who couldn't physically be in a courtroom, but wanted to learn more about the legal system. So beginning in the 1970s, different state courts began ignoring the canon and experimenting

with broadcast coverage of judicial proceedings. By the 1990s, most states allowed some sort of camera access. And the experiments, for the most part, went well. Cameras became so common in the courtrooms that by 1991, there was a whole television network dedicated to it, called court TV. The matter of the people of state of California versus Elizabeth Ambrugger, order of business this morning, ladies and gentlemen, will start with the opening statements by the lawyers and opening statement.

Jane Curley says that soon even federal courts, which had a much more stringent ban on cameras since the 1940s, also began testing the waters and televising their trials. Federal experiment was going very well by everybody's estimation. I was on a panel at the American Bar Association annual meeting one year and we were talking about it and only complaint that was coming from the federal judges were that the media weren't coming off and enough to record the trials. Why aren't they coming to our fascinating copyright cases and things like that? But nobody had any complaints about it. Huge high-profile cases like the Menendez brothers

and Jeffrey Dahmer were all aired gavill to gavill on television. With video cameras becoming more and more the norm in the 1990s, some court-martis were worried that their jobs were in danger. What was the point of a network hiring an illustrator when every single trial moment was instantaneously documented live on television? I think all of the court-room artists thought that was going to be the end of court-room art. Court-room artist Mona Schaefer Edwards again. She actually started making backup plans for her career around this time.

It was very funny because I thought, okay, I'll go back to fashion because I still like it. And I'm good at it. And I thought, okay, well, this was a nice run. And then the OJ Simpson case happened. If you've been watching television over the past couple of hours, you've been watching the search for OJ Simpson. And that search ended tonight under the eye. Beginning in 1995 the city of Los Angeles began the ruling eight and a half month criminal

trial of OJ Simpson. If you were alive in 1995 your lasting memory of this trial was probably that it devolved into a total joke. They have come from across the globe bringing their satellite trucks pulling miles of cable? I found 49 camera men, 25 anchors, 20 producers I could see but a lot of them weren't that truck. The presiding judge, Judge Lance Edo, seemed absolutely incapable of managing court romantics. Remember these words.

If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. And most observers blame the bloated media presence. It was totally a circus, a complete circus. Although cameras were famously allowed inside the courtroom for this trial, Mona Schaefer Edwards was also hired to sketch both the preliminary hearing and the criminal trial alongside other media. She says that the clonery was palpable.

In the preliminary trial, they did have some witnesses who, funnily enough, by the time it was the criminal trial, had total makeovers. And I do remember Johnny Cochran, who was a lovely man. He came into court every day, and he would adjust the lectern right where the camera angle. And then the witnesses, they were dressed up, they had a hair done. It absolutely colors a witness's testimony to have a camera on them.

For media transparency advocates who had argued for decades that camera technology wasn't disruptive, that witnesses wouldn't be intimidated by the camera lens. That lawyers weren't going to put on a dog and pony show, that the integrity of the justice system wouldn't be compromised. The OJ Simpson trial seemed to prove the exact opposite. Comedians made a mockery out of this double murder trial for eight straight months. J. Leno even featured a chorus line of judge Edo impersonators performing choreographed jazz numbers every night. State and federal judges all over the country saw this unfurling live on television and

took it as an example of what could happen to them if they brought cameras into their courtrooms. And judges, federal judges who I know respect and like, who had been all on board for cameras suddenly said we can't have this. This is a disaster in the making. So once again, the snake rounded back on its own tail as judges across the nation unceremoniously banished recording technology from their courtrooms. And cameras are still prohibited at the federal district court level except for ceremonial

proceedings like swearing in for a citizenship, that sort of thing. And you can draw a straight line from the adjacent Simpson trial to that policy. Accordingly this circularity granted a state of execution for sketch artists. Of course, you know crime never stops, right? And we started having these amazing, just really horrific crimes. Courtroom artist Pat Lopez again. She says that the post-OJ years were actually a gold rush era for Courtroom artists like her.

In fact, I had three trials going in one day. I started out in Dallas, and they flew me to Houston for Selina. There was a hearing there, and then I went back to Waco in one day. I could not turn around. I had so much work from 1994 until 1999, probably, because of that. 1999 probably because of that. Despite years of push and pull and push, cameras are still kept in a legal gray area.

They're still banned in all federal courts and in most state and criminal courts, it varies from case to case. And although today we've developed much more discrete ways to record a trial like audio and video streaming, many judges are still hesitant to bring any sort of recording technology into the courtroom. To be honest, I came into the story slightly skeptical of cameras in courtrooms. As a person who literally talks into a microphone for a living, I am acutely aware that if someone

knows they are being recorded, it can at least subtly change their behavior. Like, do you think my voice actually sounds like this in real life? No. In-person Vivian sounds more like Jennifer Coolidge. So when the Justice system already feels so fragile, when there's so much on the line for the defendant and the victims of the case, when someone's life could be on the line, I wondered why risk introducing any element,

no matter how small, that can negatively impact what happens in a court of law. That is until one case. I gather programming to bring you live coverage of what is certain to be one of the most closely watched and potentially consequential trials of our time, the murder trial of Derek Chauvin. In March of 2021, the trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, began in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the time of the trial, Minnesota actually had very stringent rules regarding electronic

media in criminal courtrooms. Curly says that the state had already been incredibly reluctant to allow cameras at all. Essentially, everyone involved from the defendants to the prosecution had to give permission to allow recording during the trial process. If anyone objected, that was the end of it. And practically that meant that there were never cameras in trial. The prosecutor in the case did oppose televising the trial, but because the COVID lockdown drastically limited the number of press in the courtroom and because the case was of such a high public interest,

the presiding judge Peter Kale went against him in the soda precedent. Judge Kale decided that the entirety of the trial needed to stream live for the world to see. Had we not had the pandemic restrictions that were in place at this time of the show of entrial, I think it is unlikely, although not impossible, that Judge K. Hill would have consented to having cameras in the courtroom. Judge K. Hill set a lot of ground rules for the broadcasts in order to mitigate problems before they happened. Jurors were not allowed to be recorded.

There were restrictions on which witnesses could be filmed, and the movement of the cameras was limited. But, in a break with history, the broadcast of the trial went off nearly hitch-free. There were no antics, no one reported being intimidated, and after this experience, the lead prosecutor, who had originally opposed the broadcast, changed his view entirely, and is now a supporter of cameras in the court. I think this went as well or better as could ever have been expected under the circumstances.

In March of 2023, largely influenced by the Chauvin trial, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled to expand camera access in state criminal trials. Starting in 2024, permission from both the defense and the prosecution will no longer be required to broadcast courtroom proceedings. And earlier this year, Senators Grassley and Durban introduced a bipartisan bill that would bring cameras into the Supreme Court for the first time. The court has never really been known for being super chill about things like change or technology or transparency and former Justice Souter once famously said,

quote, the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body end quote. So whether that bill would ever actually pass is hard to say. At least for now, courtroom artists are still safe. I didn't see a future in 20 years ago either. I kept thinking this is the last year, this is the last year, this is the last year, but it keeps happening. Courtroom artist Mona Schaefer Edwards again. I don't know how it's going to go,

but it's been great, and I love it, and as long as I can do it, then I would like to just keep on doing it. There are some trials that people generally agree are better served by courtroom artists than by cameras, sensitive cases that involve domestic abuse, sexual assault, or that include minors. And there's no guarantee other televised high profile cases would go as smoothly as the one in Minnesota.

Jane Curately acknowledges that part of the reason why the livestream of the show in trial was so well received was because it ended with a conviction. Had it gone the other way, who knows what the public response would have been. But camera advocates think that if actually seeing our justice system in action makes you angry, maybe it's because you should be angry. You can't fix a system if you can't see it's broken. Coming up, Vivian helps me get to the bottom of a Supreme Court mystery. After this. We are back with producer Vivian Le. Vivian, you may now address the court.

Thank you. Thank you, your honor. Please be here. What do you have for us? Yes, so I wanted to talk a little bit more with you about the Supreme Court and its relationship to television coverage in particular, which has been banned for decades. Yeah, we touched a little bit on this in the main story. Yes, yeah. So the Supreme Court actually, it does record audio of the arguments themselves, which has been publicly accessible for a while if people don't know, you should check it out. So cool.

Yeah, but the court has always been like, really skittish about live coverage or television coverage in particular. Yeah, I mean, people have been pushing for decades to have a version of C-SPAN for the Supreme Court because it's just so different to experience these arguments in real time versus days later in an audio recording. It's just so different.

Right, so a few years ago, the Supreme Court did allow for the first time live audio streaming of oral arguments. And it was for, you know, exactly the same reason why we are currently recording this Coda in separate rooms in different cities, which is COVID. Yes, because of COVID, the justices could not meet in person. So they began allowing public access to these teleconference calls that were happening in real time, which leads me to the actual reason why I brought here. I know where this is going. I know where this is going. Okay. But for people who haven't caught on yet on Wednesday, May 6, 2020, something happened and it was historic and I'm going

to play the clip right now. FCC has said is that when the subject matter of the call ranges to suspects, then the call is transformed and it's a call that was been allowed. Yes, the Supreme Court toilet flush. That's toilet flush. So for listeners who have been living under a rock, smack dab in the middle of oral arguments, someone on the Supreme Court, maybe not on the Supreme Court, but on the Supreme Court phone call, forgot to hit mute, and a very audible toilet flush

rang out for the entire world to hear. This is like my worst nightmare. It is a complete nightmare. And a nightmare for the Supreme Court justices on the call, because of course, the next logical question after like, was that a toilet flush? Is who flushed the toilet? Yeah.

So I never actually found out who that was. Did anyone ever find out who the Phantom toilet flusher was? OK, so there is an incredible slate article by Ashley Feinberg, who is the best detective in the world. She's the one who found out that Mitt Romney was tweeting under the pseudonym Pierre de Lecto. She's very skilled. She did probably the most in-depth investigative reporting on the subject, and I really, really wanted to

share some of her findings. Okay, well, I'm a little nervous to where this is going to go, but let's go for it. Okay, so although it is not impossible, it is very unlikely that it was either Roman Martinez, who was the lawyer who you hear actively speaking on Mike at the time. And it was probably not just this Kagan because this was during her round of questioning. So she was also just on Mike. Okay. Okay. That'd be a huge power move if she was doing it.

Totally. Yeah. From the toilet. Yeah. And so it also probably wasn't Ruth Bader Ginsburg because Ginsburg at the time was actually in the hospital, she took this call from the hospital and every time it was her turn to speak, you could kind of hear like this background noise and that wasn't present during the time of the flush. But the main person of interest is Justice Breyer. Okay. So why Justice Breyer? It is important to note that Justice Breyer did not confess to being the toilet flusher nor do we have definitive proof that it was him. Okay.

Notice. But Feinberg sites a number of things here. For one, Breyer had a number of technical difficulties during the call. Like, you could hear audible clinking in the background during some of the moments that he was on mic. So it kind of indicated that, you know, he wasn't too worried about multitasking during oral arguments. Yeah, yeah. Or wasn't familiar with the muting and unmuting that we've gotten so adept at in our years of Zoom.

Yes, exactly. And that brings me to the most damning piece of evidence that comes out of this investigation, which is the way in which some of the justices signed off at the ends of their rounds of questioning. What do you mean by that? When some of the justices were finished talking, there was a very subtle, audible dropout where you could tell that they had hit mute. So I'm going to play for you a clip from Clarence Thomas as he's finishing his questioning. And you're going to have to listen super closely

to the ambient noise in between Thomas's voice and the voice that comes after it. And even someone knocking on their front door. Well, I think... So you can hear a little bit of a drop out there and then I'm also gonna play Sotomayor too so you can get a sense of what Sotomayor did too. The remedy shouldn't we let the circuit below decide that question.

But you're on it to two points on that. So right there, you hear that right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's hard to tell an audio, but fineberg actually analyzed a visual waveform of these three. These three just back to back, which is right there in the, I just zoomed you picture a room and if you tell me what you see. Yeah, so it has the Thomas wave form, which has normal audio waves that you see.

And then when it goes to mute, when they're done talking, it goes to nothing. Like there's no sound. And then sort of my or is the same thing. She talks, she signs off, it goes to mute. But Breyer has like the little peaks of talking. And then when he's done talking, you still have those little ambient, like little peaks though low, as if he didn't know or in this case, he did not mute. Yes, exactly. So he is the lead suspect. Again, no definitive proof, but I think that's the closest that we could get to an answer for now, and so he confesses on his deathbed. But you know,

this toilet thing is so funny because there's a pream court goes to such great lengths to like project this air of grandeur and dignity. Like they wear these black robes and they sit on this elevated bench of mahogany. You know, the guy comes down and he goes, he does the OEA chant thing. And they have these little, these cute little quill pens next to them. Right, right. But when you like, you know, listen to their arguments and even written arguments, they're just human beings and they sometimes make really bad arguments and make dumb decisions.

And they also use toilets and they have IT Zoom issues. Yes. There's a lot of good reasons to question the dignity of the Supreme Court, but everybody poops. Well, I'm so glad you could bring this important issue to our audience. So, Roman, for your sake, I left out a lot of hilarious details from Ashley Feinberg's Toilet Flush investigation. So, listeners want to check that out for themselves. We'll have a link to that on our website. This is great. Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate it. Thank you. 99% Invisible was produced this week by By Vivian Lay And Edited By Kelly Prime Original Music By Swan Rihau Sound Mixed By Martin Gonzalez Tulane Yehaw is our Senior Editor, Kurt Colestet is our Digital Director. Throws a Team Includes Chris Baroube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Lash Maddon, Jacob Maldonado Medina, Joe Rosenberg, and me Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.

Special thanks this week to Heading Nisheri, whose book Crime and Justice in the Age of Court TV was really helpful to this story and to Rachel Ward for additional editorial support. Also thanks to Jared Hernandez, who created two amazing original courtroom sketches for this episode, although I have some objection to how he depicted my nose.

It is maybe that big, but it is not that round. But anyway, thank you, Jared. I guess. You can check those out at our website. We are a part of this Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family. Now head to our 6 blocks north in the Pandora building. In beautiful. Uptown.

Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok too. You can find links to other stitcher shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org. 中正