The biggest story in town is unfolding inside the Moakley Courthouse, but because no cameras are allowed inside federal court, news photographers are left out in the cold.
Two years after the Boston Marathon bombings, there is one way for the public to watch the trial on TV. Head to the seventh floor overflow room here at the courthouse, where you can view the proceedings on a closed-circuit monitor. As court sketch artist Jane Collins can tell you, it’s not a great picture.
You can’t blame Collins for wanting a better view. With only pastels the and paper, her job is do what these cameras are not allowed to: capture the courtroom action. And that TV monitor in the overflow room, while far from ideal, allows her to see defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s face, something she can’t see in the courtroom, even when she’s sitting just a few feet away.
"We have one seat, and we can’t move," Collins said. "So we’re always trying to get a glimpse of him when he first walks in and then reimagine it on the drawing because all we ever see is the back of his head."
Their sketches are front-page news around the world. So here’s the question: how closely do they resemble Tsarnaev?
MassLive reporter and courtroom regular Garrett Quinn said Collins does a "pretty good job of capturing what is going on in the courtroom, what his mannerisms are like." "The only people who can see his face are the jurors, the people in the overflow room, the judge and the attorneys. We’re all behind him."
So it makes sense that the sketches vary from one artist to another. It’s a challenging job being a courtroom sketch artist, particularly so in this case.
"Sometimes defendants are eager to turn around, eager to make a comment or show themselves or show their expression," Collins said. "He isn’t. He doesn't change; he just looks straight ahead all the time."
An artist’s interpretation: it’s the closest can cameras get to the courtroom action.
