New York life | Munching Gotti, Weinstein and Trump

Once a month, our journalist Richard Hétu takes us into the news in New York, where he has lived for almost 30 years.

(New York) During her long career as a New York court illustrator, Jane Rosenberg sketched John Lennon’s assassin, Gambino crime boss and Wall Street’s biggest crook, among other notorious criminals. But no defendant will have given him greater professional satisfaction than the first former American president indicted in the history of the United States.

Let’s go back to April 4, 2023, the day of Donald Trump’s indictment in connection with the Stormy Daniels affair. For a court illustrator, the first appearance of a defendant is the most stressful, because the case can be concluded in the blink of an eye, leaving barely time to sketch a few lines in charcoal pencil on a blank page .

However, that day, Jane Rosenberg had already finished a first drawing when one of the prosecutors began to read the 34 charges against Donald Trump. The latter then begins to stare at his accuser.

“He had an expression that I had to capture,” recalls the illustrator, who enjoyed a perfect angle. “He seemed to look at the prosecutor with contempt. He didn’t look happy. »

As soon as the drawing is received, the Reuters press agency, its client of the day, broadcasts it on social networks. Subscribed to no platform, Jane Rosenberg discovered that her drawing had gone viral only when she opened her email box later that day. A television channel wants to interview him. THE New Yorker wants to see his other productions of the day.

This is how she became the first legal illustrator whose one of the drawings adorns the cover of the prestigious magazine.

And where does the septuagenarian place this episode in her career? “At the top,” she replies.

Funny moments

However, this career has given him many other unforgettable – or funny – moments, some of which include unexpected lessons. Behind the worst criminals are sometimes the most vain – or comical – people, she discovered.

“John Gotti asked me to draw him without his double chin,” she says of the former head of the Gambino mafia clan, who died in prison after being convicted of numerous crimes, including five murders.

“Harvey Weinstein wanted more hair,” she adds about the fallen film producer, convicted of sexual assault and rape in New York and Los Angeles.

Without being recognized as a criminal, Donald Trump Jr. made his own request to Jane Rosenberg during his clan’s trial for fraud in New York. “Make me sexy,” he said.

Did she acquiesce to these requests?

” No ! “, she exclaimed recently, leading her interlocutor towards the room that serves as her workshop in her apartment on the Upper West Side, in Manhattan.

In a corner, a self-portrait of the illustrator with red hair, faithful to reality, sits on an easel.

It is then that Jane Rosenberg begins to talk about the defendants who sketched her while she was sketching them. Comedian Eddie Murphy was the first to play this game, drawing on Post-it notes. “He was making fun of me,” she said.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the accomplice of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, took things more seriously, spending several days of her trial drawing. One day, Jane Rosenberg made a drawing showing the defendant drawing her.

“I asked his lawyer to see his drawing. She said to me, “Oh, Jane, you know I can’t do that.” » The drawing depicting Ghislaine Maxwell sketching Jane Rosenberg has gone viral.

At the origin of a profession

In the United States, the profession of legal illustrator took off after the “trial of the century”, held in New Jersey in 1935: Bruno Hauptmann was accused of the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, son of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. There were more than 120 cameras in the courtroom.

Convicted, Hauptmann tried in vain to overturn the verdict by invoking the media circus surrounding his trial. Recognizing the problem, the American Bar Association secured a ban on cameras in courtrooms.

In 2024, New York State is among the jurisdictions where this ban is still in effect, with a few exceptions. Hence the career that Jane Rosenberg was able to pursue for more than four decades.

Nothing prepared him for it, except a talent for drawing.

“I was a starving artist,” she says, recalling the days when she took portraits of tourists in Provincetown, Massachusetts. “I did everything I could to make money. »

One day, while in New York, she attended a conference on being a court illustrator. “I would love to do that,” she said to herself.

She began to haunt the courtrooms of New York where the prostitutes who the police delighted in arresting appeared at night. That’s where she got her start. After assembling a portfolio, she sold a first drawing to NBC, having previously suffered a refusal from a brand new channel called CNN.

“I was very excited. I called my mom and said, “Look, I’m on TV.” »

His cartoon was about “Murder at the Met”, a title used by the tabloids to describe the mysterious murder of a young violinist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the summer of 1980.

Waiting for the big day

A few months later, Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon.

“I was a Beatles fan,” says Jane Rosenberg, reliving the suspect’s first appearance. “At the time, I didn’t know much about the law and looked at Chapman’s lawyer and wondered, ‘How can he represent this guy?’ »

“I ended up marrying a lawyer and understanding how the system works. Everyone deserves a defense. Everyone has the right to a lawyer,” adds the woman who captured Chapman reading The Catcher in the Ryeby JD Salinger, during his trial.

This goes for Gotti, Weinstein and Trump, as well as all the other defendants that Jane Rosenberg has encountered in courtrooms, a group that includes Woody Allen, Jeffrey Epstein, Steve Bannon, Joaquín Guzmán, known as El Chapo, and Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted for his role in the first attack on the World Trade Center.

Describing herself as an artist and a journalist, she thus summarizes the evolution of judicial information.

Recently, she and other court illustrators met with officials at the New York court where Donald Trump’s first criminal trial is expected to be held. How does she feel as D-Day approaches, which could occur in mid-April?

“I’m so stressed, it’s unbelievable,” she responds, first describing what will be an even heavier security system than that put in place during El Chapo’s trial.

Then there is the issue of the location of forensic illustrators.

“They want to put us in the third row, behind the Secret Service agents and teams from both parties. What I fear is that I won’t see anything from where I’ll be sitting. It’s still my problem. But once I’m in my place with my art materials and I can see, I’m happy. I can do my job. »