Thursday: An actress draws an audience as she faces court; support for the governor’s death penalty moratorium; and the tip of the Transamerica Pyramid.
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We’d been waiting for hours in a drab beige hallway, hunched over phones or laptops, when we were herded into a windowless courtroom and packed into pew-style seats.
And then, there she was, the actress Lori Loughlin. She wore large glasses and a cream mockneck sweater. She sat behind a pane of glass, alongside federal agents and a few other people accused of committing crimes against the United States.
Ms. Loughlin had surrendered to the authorities in Los Angeles earlier in the day, after she and her husband, the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, were charged as part of a vast college admissions fraud investigation that has ballooned into a national scandal.
Prosecutors have alleged that Ms. Loughlin and Mr. Giannulli, who appeared in court on Tuesday, paid $500,000 in bribes to get their two daughters accepted as recruits for the rowing team at the University of Southern California, even though neither took part in the sport.
[Read more of The Times’s coverage of the college admissions scandal here.]
On Wednesday, at the Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, Ms. Loughlin appeared before a judge for the first time. The hearing, in which she agreed to post a $1 million bond secured by her home, lasted just minutes. Such is the peculiar phenomenon of a celebrity court appearance.
Outside the courtroom, I met Mona S. Edwards, who’s been working as a courtroom sketch artist for about three decades. She started as a fashion illustrator, which she said was good training for observing what people wear and how they move.
Ms. Loughlin, for instance, wasn’t arrested at home without warning. So it was no accident, Ms. Edwards said, that she chose a white sweater. The actress had stood with her arms crossed, obscured by her lawyer.
Though she didn’t have as much time to sketch as she has in full trials, Ms. Edwards said the day was the same as any: unpredictable.
“The thing is, I’m always ready,” she told me later. “I never know if I have five minutes or an hour.
