Above is the video I shot of Kim Rothstein leaving the courthouse. I had a great start because I was separated from the pack of photogs, who weren't even allowed to cross the sidewalk. It goes downhill from there; I could have gotten great video of the car entry, but I held the camera at the wrong angle. I will never call another photographer an idiot again (OK, I lie). Then it ends on a good note as Kim's attorney (and driver) Scott Saidel gets his Pulp on.
So what else to say about the sentencing? Here are some random observations:
-- It was standing-room only in the courtroom. Notable attendees, other than those mentioned in the previous post, were Berger Singerman bankruptcy attorney Chuck Lichtman, attorney David Ferguson, Bill Scherer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Kaplan, and Shirley Henderson. Who is Shirley Henderson, you ask? See her work after the jump.
-- Notable no-show: Former Kim Rothstein bodyguard Joe Alu, who has been AWOL for quite some time. He and Kim split -- more specifically, Kim let him go -- several weeks ago. Apparently now Stacie Weisman is
bodyguard enough. What about Weisman's impromptu mask to hide the part of her face that wasn't already obscured by the diamond-studded designer sunglasses. What, she thinks she's Michael Jackson now?
-- I didn't even stay for Nurik. I'd already gotten too much of Marc during the hearing.
-- You can say what you want, but Kim's emotion was real today (at least most of it). I'm not saying she necessarily misses him all that much, but I'm sold on the fact that she truly loved Scott Rothstein.
-- I tried to get Gay Rothstein getting into the car, but again I got in incredible position but missed with the narrow Flip camera angle. I got out on Broward Boulevard (no cars were coming) on the other side of the car and was leaning over the roof. It would have been killer. Anyway, just as they get in the car, the old guy driving the Rothstein car (didn't get a good look at him), says to me, "Get off the car or lose your hands."
-- Fraudulent operations the attorneys and judge mentioned during the hearing: Enron, Frederick Brandau (West Palm Beach), Marc Dreier, HealthSouth, and BSO. Just kidding with that last one, Sheriff Al, but I thought it was cool that Judge Cohn mentioned the Broward Sheriff's Office twice and the Fort Lauderdale Police Department once. I'm afraid both of those departments want to pretend like nothing happened. Nothing to see here. folks! One more thing about Cohn: The judge stepped up to plate and his put mark on this case in a very positive way. He made it one of those days that you can actually be proud of your country.
-- During a recess before Cohn handed down his sentence, the talk of the room was the fact that the judge was keying in on Rothstein's forgery of judges' signatures on cooked-up court documents. Ferguson said he expected 55 years. Jared Rosenstein said 50. I was still thinking 45. I thought he was going to give Rothstein a little bone for facing the music. I asked Bill Scherer what he thought, and he said he wasn't going to venture a guess but talked about the forgeries and noted that I had written that it was a "game-changer" a long time ago. Well, damned if he wasn't right.
-- OK, so who's this Shirley Henderson. Well, she's a sketch artist apparently commissioned by the Associated Press who sat in the front row and did a great rendition of Rothstein (and less so of Nurik and LeVecchio). It was cool because I would look at her work every five minutes or so and saw it evolve sort of like that Picasso documentary where you watch the canvas as he paints. I thought she was way off on Rothstein at first, but it grew into an interesting piece of work. Here it is:
