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, 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.
Loughlin had surrendered to authorities in Los Angeles earlier in the day, after she and her husband, 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 Loughlin and 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.
On Wednesday, at the Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, 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.
Loughlin, for instance, wasn’t arrested at home without warning. So it was no accident, 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, 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.”
After Loughlin’s appearance, most of the couple dozen reporters filed back into the hall. That’s when Stephen Semprevivo was called.
Semprevivo is an outsourcing executive from Los Angeles and another parent charged in the case. He wore a white button-down shirt, open at the collar, and looked glumly toward his wife, who was seated in the courtroom.
Loughlin had already agreed to the million-dollar bail, but Semprevivo’s lawyers asked for their client’s to be set at a quarter of that.
But Alex Wyman, an assistant U.S. attorney, argued that the defendant had been accused of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and the bail amount needed to be significant enough to make an impression.
So the judge set it at $1 million, too. Both Semprevivo and Loughlin are due in court in Boston later this month.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.