A battered bowling ball perched in a baby's car seat on a courtroom bench provided a stark backdrop to the opening of a manslaughter trial today.

There is a fanciful postcard of "The Supremes Court" that shows three black women in judicial robes sitting behind a courtroom bench.

While we are in the courtroom bench will make all rulings on the admissibility of and other evidence, and the decisipn of the bench will be final in all matters.

Mr. Dowd's father, Jack, a retired New York City firefighter, rose from a courtroom bench filled with family members.

When his character rises from his courtroom bench and the gallery stands in response, he waves them to sit down with an oh-you-shouldn't-have modesty, a gesture that was ad-libbed.

But her mother, Paula Shapiro, hunched over her courtroom bench and wept.

About 25 of them sat tight against one another on three courtroom benches, silently, even as Ms. Long pleaded for leniency on behalf of Mr. Grant.

Judge Dixon declined to be interviewed, as judges generally do; in his stead the camera offered rather ominous pictures of an imposing courtroom bench and what looked like a two-ton gavel.

Mrs. Smith's mother and stepfather, Linda and Beverly Russell, and about two dozen other relatives filled two of the courtroom benches behind the defense table.

Singing and chanting, the opposition party supporters danced on the courtroom benches, where their presidential candidates had been awaiting Judge Chitengi's decision.