Expert: Jack Toomey - 9/2/2006

Question
Dear Officer Toomey,

Hello, I hope you are well and thank you for your willingness to
answer questions. I have the greatest respect for your work, and
in fact I took an applied forensics course at college that was
taught my friend James Jabbour, over at the Conneticutt State
Attorney's Office.

I am researching a man who was convicted of extortion in Los
Angeles Superior Court in 1938. He is important to me for
geneaological reasons and also because of his little-known
inventions. I know the man's full name, his year of birth, his
place of residence at the time, the name of one of the
witnessess, the name of the presiding judge, the disposition of
the case, and a few other basic details. I am very interested in
trying to obtain as much other information as I can about this
particular case. Trial transcripts would be very interesting if they
were availible, but I especially hope there will be booking
photographs of the subject, a certain Sydney Temple Leopold
McLaglen.

Do you think it would be worthwhile to ask the clerk of the court
to pull copies of whatever records may still exist, and send them
to me, or do you think the records would no longer exist?

Thanks very much for your time and attention; I look forward to
hearing from you.

Answer
    I would doubut that the clerk of the court is going to send you anything.  You are probably going to have to make a trip to that courthouse and file some sort of request that the record of the trial be produced.  Don't be surprised if the record has long ago been dumped in the trash and only the skimpiest info is available.  However you might want to call first to save yourself a trip.

    I really don't know how the California courts operate or what they do with their old records but another possibility is that they are moved to warehouses or other places were records are stored.

   But call first.