As I figured out jury duty law for both Common Sense - Third Millennium and the I, Juror blog, I explained what happened when I called jury duty systems in Los Angeles County and San Francisco City / County. I wanted information from the Los Angeles County jury duty system about how Barbra Streisand handles jury duty. I also wanted information from the San Francisco City / County jury duty system about how Thomas Steyer handles jury duty. Each time, my perm government employees told me that they are not allowed to give me the information. That gets interesting, because I just made a discovery about official California jury duty system secrecy, reported here first.
Heritage Auctions specializes in high-end, valuable collectibles, and they opened for business decades ago. They handle high-end fine art, antiques, coins, collectibles, etc. They also handle autographs and entertainment industry memorabilia. On May 28, 2003, Heritage Auctions hosted the Odyssey Autographs & Memorabilia Auction June 2003 Session One #1064. This auction featured hundreds of entertainment-focused lots. Lot 468 through lot 508 of this auction featured apparently genuine Los Angeles County jury duty system documents, sent directly to the Los Angeles County jury duty system, by celebrities who lived in Los Angeles County when they sent in those documents. The paperwork dates range from July 19, 1962 to February 14, 1986. I do not have a Heritage Auctions account, so I could not see detailed images of the lots. See a summary of information about this auction at this spreadsheet. That summary spreadsheet includes the names of the people who sent in the paperwork. All of the people seem to be entertainment industry celebrities, with some home connection to Los Angeles County.
We can guess that all of the people named in these documents sent those documents directly to Los Angeles County government mailing addresses, through the U.S. Post Office. With some exceptions, as seen in the paperwork images and lot descriptions, those people most likely sent the documents to the Los Angeles County jury duty system. It becomes doubtful that they sent this paperwork to the National Enquirer, for example, or TMZ, or Harvey Levin. Therefore, one or more employees in Los Angeles County government - and probably working in the Los Angeles County jury duty system - somehow physically removed the documents from government possession. A government investigation that would explain the story behind all this has not yet happened.
The very existence of these auction lots, in my opinion, looks like total corruption. If these lots involve illegal acts, it becomes fair to ask if other types of corrupt, illegal acts happen inside California jury duty hiring systems. It becomes logical to demand top-to-bottom audits of these systems, first focusing on their document and information handling standards and practices. If information and documents leaked out of at least one California jury duty system - in this case, the Los Angeles County jury duty system - as a definite violation of trust and probable violation of law, it becomes easy to wonder how these California jury duty systems handle the information of everyone eligible for jury duty. However, those audits must go further. For example, in an earlier article, I investigated a mysterious September 9, 2006 political campaign money contribution involving Barb(A)ra Streisand. According to the Federal Election Commission, she paid political campaign contribution money from the mysterious
Barbara Streisand
c/o Boulevard Management
21650 Oxnard Street, Suite 1925
Pomona, CA 91767-7888
address. Research shows that this address does not exist at this time, and most likely did not exist on September 9, 2006. If the Los Angeles County jury duty system thinks that Barbara Streisand lives and lived at this address, every time they sent and send her jury duty paperwork, it would bounce because the U.S. Postal Service would never find it. The L.A. County jury duty system would have a major bureaucratic hassle to get the paperwork to her, at best. They might well never succeed, and as a result, Streisand would never show up for jury duty at all. An audit will first determine exactly where the Los Angeles County jury duty system thinks she lives, and then establish her complete jury duty summons history and relevant jury duty service history. If anything about Barb(A)ra Streisand jury duty history information seems questionable, further investigation will resolve those questions. Of course, the audit will not stop with her. Many people in Los Angeles County, San Francisco City / County, Marin County, Contra Costa County, etc., pay massive amounts of political campaign contribution money. Their complete jury duty summons history, combined with their relevant jury duty history information, must become public. On the other hand, if the auctioned jury duty documents leaked as part of official government law and policy, those leaks instantly become precedent for open, unrestricted access into California jury duty hiring system operations.
Because of the jury duty system information leaks, the Barb(a)ra Streisand Pomona address issue, and overall jury duty system secrecy, people in California who obey jury duty government laws - as American citizens - can have zero confidence in jury duty system integrity at this time. This zero confidence extends to all Americans outside of California, who themselves obey jury duty government laws where they live. Those citizens have a stake in California jury duty system operations, through the direct and indirect flows of their federal tax money to those California government jury duty systems specifically, and California state / county / city / etc. governments generally. Their wealth and treasure keeps California government systems alive.
The document leaks started in the early 1960's - more than half a century ago. They automatically raise major questions, listed below the line. Only California jury duty system hiring audits will answer these questions, and other questions about California jury duty system operations. If internal government employees road-block those audits, then nonviolent, large-scale, long-lasting jury duty strikes become justified and inevitable.
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Questions about the Heritage Auctions Los Angeles County jury duty hiring system document auction:
1. Who consigned these documents to Heritage Auctions? Heritage Auctions most likely has contact information about the consignor(s), even after seventeen years.
2. Did Heritage Auctions have an opinion about the legality of these lots? If so, what opinion did they have?
3. If the consignor(s) received the documents from someone else
a. when did this transfer or transfers happen?
b. how much, if anything did he / she / they pay to receive them?
c. do the consignor(s) have other related documents, not yet publicly available?
d. who supplied them?
e. if the pre-consignor source received the documents from someone else, questions a - d above apply to every step in the transfer chain, back to the original party or parties that removed the documents from government possession
4. If the consignor(s) always had possession of the documents at time of removal from government possession
a. when did he / she / they remove the documents?
b. did he / she / they remove the documents with the permission of other government employees?
c. did he / she / they try to sell the documents, in any way, in any other (attempted) transactions? If yes, we need to see metadata about those (attempted) transactions
d. do the consignor(s) have other related documents, not yet publicly available?
5. Do California jury duty systems have document management systems in place to prevent jury duty paperwork leaks?
6. Do California jury duty systems undergo document management system audits?
a. if yes, what do the results show?
7. What does Los Angeles County Jury Services Director Darrell Mahood know about these leaks?
