Sunday Morning Hot Tea - No. 29
Drinking the Water and Sketchy Sketchers
Welcome to Sunday Morning Hot Tea where I write about a little something up top then answer a legal question for you down below. This week, who is to say who is crazy? Plus, why don’t you take a picture of a trial? It’ll last longer!
In this edition:
Topic of the Week – The Ghost of the Baker Hotel
Legal Question – Sketchy Courtroom Sketches
Just As It Once Was
Earlier this month, I drove out to a town just west of Dallas-Fort Worth called Mineral Wells. It’s a good hour from Fort Worth, which is already a good hour from my house in East Dallas. It was one of my final assignments at my day job, and I was glad to do it. Part of my fellowship was to deliver legal services to folks in rural areas, and this particular person was unable to leave their home for health reasons. I’m going to be vague about their identity because, in a town of just 15,000 people, the list of folks who could fit a certain description is short.
For various reasons, I never got to meet the person I drove out there to see. I didn’t count the day as a total loss, though. First, I had a friend with me: Victoria, a law student who worked as an intern in our office. She and I had a good time on the drive out there, content that day to roll with the punches.
When we first coasted into Mineral Wells, we were surprised by the high quality of the houses we passed, imagining, I suppose, that everyone lived in covered wagons and log cabins. One particularly well-masoned home sported a shiny gold star on its exterior.
“That’s the mayor’s house,” I said.
“Really?”
“No,” I said. “But it could be.”
We turned a corner. In the distance, we saw a high hill with giant, aged white letters reading “WELCOME” in the style of the Hollywood sign. After our fruitless trip to the client’s house, we headed straight for the only thing that could soften the blow of our unfinished journey: The Baker Hotel.
Christie and I covered The Baker on episode 92 of Sinisterhood, so I was familiar with the building and the city’s history. Still, even with all the research, it was different driving up to it. The fourteen-story beast with the Spanish Renaissance façade looks somehow worse than it did both in old photos and on the 2012 episode of Ghost Adventures. The latter showed the inside, crumbling and destroyed from years of neglect, while Zak Bagans shouted through the respirator on his face about the freaky occurrences within its walls.
Blocked from entering the hotel by towering fences on all sides, along with “SMILE – YOU’RE ON CAMERA!” signs, Victoria and I could only take photos of its exterior through the chain link.
“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “I’m getting bad vibes from this place.”
“Probably all the people who died there,” I said. “Also, the ghosts.”
After sweating our asses completely off in the sweltering Texas sun, we decided to step indoors to a storefront across the street. A neon sign in the window of the corner shop read You Maka Me Hot Coffee. Nothing gets me into a building faster than a horny pun name. I was even more enticed by the sandwich board on the sidewalk reading “Frozen Lemonade.”
The interior seemed to encompass three places in one. Just behind the glass doors, several sofas and chairs faced a boxy television, forming a coffee shop lounge area. The furniture was surrounded by shelved walls covered with bags of coffee for sale. Further inside, there was a small counter in front of an espresso machine.
Around a corner, there was a full glass-enclosed candy bar that extended the length of the shop. Case after case was full of taffy, chocolate covered peanuts, and toffee.
Behind that, there were dozens of shelves of DVDs and VHS tapes, echoing Blockbuster video stores of my youth. Somewhere in the middle sat an exercise bike. For use? For sale? I will never know.
An enthusiastic woman in a red American flag t-shirt greeted us, her a platinum blonde hair drawn up into a high ponytail. We ordered two frozen lemonades. She asked whether we may like some taffy to go with the frozen lemonade. I am no candy sommelier, but this pairing did not sound appetizing. We declined and waited while her companion, a mustachioed man in a vest, headed through swinging saloon doors to fetch our drinks.
“Where are y’all from?” she asked. In a town that size, I guess it’s easy to spot outsiders. I felt her look at my taupe t-strap high heels and survey Victoria’s neatly pressed slacks.
“Dallas,” we said. She nodded.
We stood without speaking, and I looked from the espresso machine to the cases of candy to the wall of DVDs, trying to reconcile it all. The woman shifted from foot to foot behind the register. I noticed the shelf behind her, stacked with navy ballcaps embroidered with the logo from the 2003 film Finding Nemo. A sign above them read, “Movie Merchandise Still Available.”
“You excited about the hotel opening up?” I asked, filling the silence. I gestured through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the front of the store. Her front row seat to the hotel’s revival.
“Yes,” she answered quickly. “You know, it’ll be a four-star resort hotel.” She added, “Just like it once was.”
“Did COVID stop the construction?” I asked.
“No, no. Actually they just replaced all those windows and doors, by hand,” she said. “Can’t you tell?”
I squinted across the street. The doors and windows looked like doors and windows. I could see the glass was intact, but I could not tell their age with my naked eye. I wondered. Is there some other way to put a door or window in without using your hands?
“Oh yes,” I lied. “They look wonderful.”
“It’ll be a four-star resort hotel,” she said again. “Just like it once was.”
Victoria and I made eye contact, each wondering, How long does a frozen lemonade take?
“We have plans if you want to see them,” she said. “Plans to the hotel.”
She pointed at large, poster-size construction plans on display, just behind another rack of DVDs. Victoria and I walked toward them.
“It’ll be a four-star resort hotel,” she said again. “Just like it once was.”
“Looks like a real destination,” I said. “Conferences, weddings.” I trailed off.
“It’ll be beautiful for weddings,” she said.
“Victoria just got engaged,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “Maybe she can get married here.” Victoria and I shared a laugh, but the woman didn’t take it as a joke.
“Oh definitely. Doors will open in 2024, but it’s booking up fast. Call Jeff, he’ll get you booked. It’ll be a four-star resort hotel, just like it once was.” Victoria and I exchanged looks.
Her companion came around with two tall cups full of what resembled vanilla milkshake. We thanked them both and headed out.
“Just like it once was?” I said once the doors were closed behind us, and we were back under the unrelenting sun. We joked about her refrain.
“Just like it once was, back when I lived there.”
“When I died there.”
We walked to a marketplace about a block away, The Baker ever looming behind us. Inside the marketplace, I lingered a bit too long at a sample station for the town’s chief export - Crazy Water - while browsing for a trinket to bring back to the Sinisterhood studio.
An enthusiastic woman with a silver bouffant and an embroidered apron approached me.
“Would you like to know the history of our town?” she asked.
I had a choice to make – I could say, “No thank you. I already did research on your town for the podcast I co-host” and simultaneously sound like a douche while also breaking this nice lady’s heart. Or, instead, I could play like I coasted into town with no agenda and let her lay it on me. I chose the second.
“Absolutely, I would love to hear your town’s history.”
She smiled wide a took a deep breath. As she recounted the mineral water’s discovery in the late 1870s, another woman wandered up.
“I’d like to hear, too,” she said. The tour guide stood a little taller and continued her speech.
She repeated the same story we had told on the air, adapted from the Crazy Water website: Once the water’s healing properties were discovered, one well was dug, then another and another and so on. The high mineral count in the water included a significant amount of lithium, which had a calming effect on the residents. Other minerals included calcium, magnesium, potassium, and zinc.
According to legend, the minerals cured anything from arthritis to sore eyes and paralysis to insomnia. After its positive impact on an older woman suffering from dementia (who they called the “Crazy Lady”), they took to calling it Crazy Water, a name it uses to this day.
“The Number 4 water has the most minerals in it,” the tour guide told us. “I’ll tell you, though, be careful.” She looked from side to side. “For some folks, myself included, the high mineral count in the Number 4 water has a laxative effect. Very powerful. Very powerful.”
The other spectator and I both nodded. I imagined this tour guide, slugging down the town water, running scared to a bathroom while her bowels rocketed themselves empty.
“Anyway, did you all want to give it a try?” She offered us empty Dixie cups. I was hesitant to slurp down a very powerful laxative water before a two-hour drive home.
I headed to the front register and stacked up my goods: a four-pack of various grades of Crazy Water, candy bars, a candle made from an old Crazy Water bottle, some honey roasted almonds. The cashier began ringing me up and told me the almonds I chose were good.
“Crazy good?” I asked. She hesitated then cracked a smile. “I am so sorry,” I said. “I am leaving town right now, I promise.”
“You know, we’re all a little crazy around here,” she said. “That’s what we say. We’re Crazy people who drink Crazy Water. It’s on the sign.”
After paying, Victoria and I headed outside and took a quick selfie with the sign the cashier told us about. It read: “Welcome to Mineral Wells: Home of CRAZY.” We walked back toward the Baker and climbed into my hot car, headed back to Fort Worth.
On the highway out of town, we passed a brick company and a military installation. Farmlands and factories. We had joked about it, but there was something in that coffee shop/video rental/candy store owner’s refrain:
“A four-star resort and hotel, just as it once was.”
Until the 1970s, The Baker was a draw. Towering, beautiful, elegant, luxurious, it hosted conventions and conferences. The decades since the doors shut have ravaged it. In the Ghost Adventures episode, Zak Bagans stood in courtyard that was overgrown and broken down. Inside, he was forced to don a respirator mask, standing before crumbling walls, tagged with spray paint. Even the “hand-installed” doors and windows haven’t brought it back to life, though it is a step in the process.
Just as it once was.
I thought of the cashier at the marketplace. The proprietor of the coffee shop/video store. The tour guide offering samples of the liquid laxative. I cringed, pitying them. They’re trapped, I thought, in a town that died a long time ago. Living on the hope that whatever that building once was, it could be that again.
Then I thought of that cashier ringing me up, charging me $20 for candle made out of a used glass water bottle. I thought of the $15 sack of almonds I bought. I thought of the hundreds of thousands of ounces of ground water they bottled and sold to suckers like me - the promise of a miracle in a bottle.
Maybe they aren’t the crazy ones, even though they call themselves that. Or, at least, if they are “crazy” as they insist, they’re the good kind of crazy. The kind who stuck around. The kind who look up at a crumbling building and see it not for what it is, but for what it could be. Just as it once was.
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Song Inspiration: I’ve been trying this tactic where I play a song on repeat while I draft a piece. I thought I would start sharing with you all what song I listen to when writing each piece. For this week, I listened to Beautiful Texas by Willie Nelson probably 300 times.
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QUESTIONS FROM YOU – Why do we use a sketch artist in a court room. Ever heard of a camera?
This week’s question is from Alex via the form. Alex asks:
I just watched Evil Genius on Netflix and was struck by the interview with the courtroom artist. He described his shifting interpretation of the defendant as the trial progressed, and it made me wonder: what is the role of a sketch artist in a courtroom? If they're present to visually document the trial, why not a camera? Surely photo or video would be a more objective recording of proceedings?
Also, on the theme of documentation - what does the stenographer produce on that little baby keyboard?! Hope you're well - thanks for brightening up some dreary English Sundays!
Great question, Alex! I hope you’re doing well, too. I hope your English Sundays are less dreary these summer days.
It’s been awhile since I have watched Evil Genius, but I flipped on the last episode to hear the part you referenced. The courtroom sketch artist described his interpretation of the defendant to the documentarian, saying:
“Early in the case, I wanted to bring out the – for lack of a better word - the animal. I wanted to bring out the villain in my illustrations – dark tones, dark eyes, wild hair. After I see her mingling with you and some of the other people and being this charming character, I found myself today starting to soften the likeness that I’m illustrating of her.”
Here are two pictures, one of the artist’s “villain” rendering earlier in the trial:
And one after he “softened” her likeness:
A HISTORY OF ALLOWING CAMERAS IN THE COURTROOM
The 1935 trial of Richard “Bruno” Hauptmann for the Lindburgh kidnapping drew tons of media scrutiny. Cameramen were climbing on the lawyers’ tables and blinding jury members and witnesses with their flashbulbs. In response to the chaos, the American Bar Association adopted a rule that banned cameras from courtrooms just two years later.
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure adopted in 1946 later mandated that: “The court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom.” Then in 1972, the national policy-making body for the federal courts known as the Judicial Conference of the United States, adopted a prohibition against “broadcasting, televising, recording, or taking photographs in the courtroom and areas immediately adjacent thereto.”
In the 1960s, the state of Texas ignored the ABA’s rules and allowed cameras in the courtroom, but that was only for state-level proceedings. That didn’t go so well, and the Supreme Court actually overturned a Texas criminal conviction based on excessive media coverage of the trial in the decision Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532 (1965).
In 1981, the unanimous Supreme Court decision, Chandler v. Florida, 449 U.S. 560, didn’t go so far as to mandate cameras in the court room, but paved the way for state courts to allow cameras during proceedings.
As of 2006, all 50 states allow for some type of camera in the court. There have been some changes made regarding civil cases in federal courts, as well as naturalization and other ceremonial events. But to this day, photographs and video cameras are prohibited in federal criminal trials in federal district courts.
The crime at issue in Evil Genius is bank robbery, which falls under federal criminal jurisdiction. This is why they needed a courtroom sketch artist to document the proceedings.
WHY DO WE NEED SKETCH ARTISTS?
When cameras are banned from court, the public and the media rely on courtroom sketch artists to capture a visual representation of what happened. There is no prohibition on sketch artists in the courtroom. Some may be treated as members of the press and required to sit in a specific area of the courtroom. Others may be treated like regular spectators.
While every artist’s process varies, many make rough sketches at the time of the court proceeding and make notes of details. Then they later finalize the sketches before selling them either to newspapers or TV stations.
You are right, Alex – a camera would be a more objective documentation of the proceeding. The pros and cons of cameras in the courtroom have been debated for decades. While some argue that it offers greater access to justice and accessibility, others say it can be a distraction and result in an unfair trial for the defendants.
Different constitutional factors are at play – while the First Amendment guarantees a free press, it doesn’t guarantee that press can send cameras anywhere. Justice Earl Warren reasoned in the Estes case that, as long as the press could send in reporters to write down what was happening, their First Amendment rights were not infringed upon.
Similarly, the constitutional due process rights of the accused should be protected. The court in the Chandler case held that a state allowing cameras in the court room does not necessarily infringe on a defendant’s constitutional rights so long as the allowance does not infringe on “fundamental guarantees” under the constitution. For instance, a state would have to hear arguments from a defendant on why cameras may bias the jury or deprive him of some other right.
You make a good point that a camera is objective. The Evil Genius sketch artist admitted that he let his emotions color his interpretation of the defendant. At the same time, doesn’t that somewhat represent how she looked? If, at first, she was rougher and more aggressive, but over time became more likable, then he captured what she “really” looked like, maybe even better than a camera. But either way, cameras weren’t allowed since it was federal district court, so his interpretation is all we have.
WHAT DOES THE STENOGRAPHER PRODUCE ON THAT BABY KEYBOARD?
Exact transcripts of a trial. How do they do it? No clue. I have been recorded by a stenographer in open court (who repeatedly asked me to slow down). I also just watched five videos on YouTube. I am still struggling to explain just how they do it. I know they use their baby keyboards to record everything that is said, word-for-word, and do it at 200+ words per minute, which is incredible.
They do it using a special keyboard that is laid out as such:
They can also add in custom dictionaries – almost like iPhone keyboard shortcuts – where a quick letter combo brings up an often-used phrase in court so they can easily keep up with the proceedings.
Here are some examples:
Using their fancy little keyboards and a connected laptop, court reporters produce a clear transcript of proceedings, delineating between speakers and obtaining clarification when needed. They are more accurate than voice-to-text software and provide human cognition that computers just can’t compete with.
They do an incredible service along with sketch artists. Without them, we wouldn’t have records of important proceedings like the ones on display here at the Library of Congress.
I hope that answers your question, Alex!
Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don't send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.
Until next week, that’s the tea, and don’t even try to draw me.
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