Kendall Co. state’s attorney seeks dismissal of ex-Joliet police sergeant’s charges

Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis has motioned to drop his case against retired Joliet Police Sgt. Javier Esqueda almost two days before his trial was set to begin.

Since October 2020, Esqueda has been facing felony charges of official misconduct in connection with the leak of the squad video of Eric Lurry Jr., 37, who died in 2020 from a drug overdose after his arrest in Joliet.

The Lurry video led to protests and a federal lawsuit against the city of Joliet from Lurry’s widow, Nicole Lurry.

On Friday, State’s Attorney Eric Weis filed a motion to dismiss the official misconduct charges against Esqueda, who was set to appear for a bench trial at 1 p.m. on Monday before Kendall County Judge Jody Gleason.

Gleason is expected to rule on Weis' motion at 9 a.m. on Monday.

“While I believe that probable cause existed for the charges at the time the case was filed, a review of all materials now known to the Kendall County State’s Attorney’s Office leads me to conclude that my office would not be able to sustain our burden of beyond a reasonable doubt if the matter were to proceed to trial,” Weis' motion said.

Weis' motion was filed the day after Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s Office released a report that was highly critical of the practices and policies of the Joliet Police Department.

Raoul’s investigators found the department has a pattern of engaging in unreasonable force, engages in disproportionate enforcement actions against Black and Latino people, and fails to hold officers accountable for misconduct.

The systemic investigation was in response to concerns raised by Joliet city officials in 2020 over the Lurry incident.

In Weis' motion on Friday, he said his office received “additional materials” that were “not originally tendered” to his office, which has “caused our office to reevaluate the evidence in this case.”

Weis motion did not elaborate on the “additional materials” and did not say on what date his office received them.

Weis' motion further said that after the Esqueda case was filed, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that “impacts the ability to successfully prosecute this case.”

The motion does not say which Supreme Court ruling.

During a key pretrial hearing on Sept. 10, Gleason granted a motion from Tomczak to block prosecutors' evidence of Esqueda’s motive in the case based on a Supreme Court ruling.

In Sept. 10 motion, Tomczak cited the June 3, 2021 Supreme Court decision called Van Buren v. United States.

Tomczak’s motion said the Supreme Court ruled a Georgia police sergeant did not “exceed authorized access” when he used his patrol vehicle’s computer to retrieve license plate information even though he had obtained that information “for an improper purpose.”

“Accordingly, in prosecutions of unauthorized access to a computer system, the singular issue is whether the defendant was authorized to access the computer and to access the data in that computer,” Tomczak’s motion said.

Tomczak’s motion said the “motivation or purpose is irrelevant to the issue of authority.”

During the Sept. 10 court hearing, Tomczak said allowing prosecutors to introduce evidence of motive would “screw the jury up as far as what their considerations are.”

Tomczak said the “real question is not is [Esqueda] a good guy or a bad guy, it’s did he have access or didn’t he have access.”

Tomczak said Esqueda was a a field training supervisor for the department and part of his job was accessing and downloading videos.

Gleason sided with Tomczak by ruling Esqueda’s motive is irrelevant to the case.

“The only thing that’s really relevant is did [Esqueda] access something outside of his authority? What he finally did with that is totally irrelevant. All [prosecutors] have to prove is it was outside of his authority,” Gleason said.

For the past four years, Tomczak and Weis have quarreled over numerous pretrial issues.

Among them was whether the evidence against Esqueda should be suppressed if it was obtained in retaliation for him blowing the whistle on the Lurry video.

Another issue is whether Esqueda could even call himself a whistleblower at trial.

Esqueda has said he blew the whistle on the Lurry video because he believed the Joliet Police Department was engaged in a cover-up.

At a Sept. 10 court hearing, Tomczak said there was evidence of the video “being destroyed” and it wasn’t being released to Lurry’s family.

“It was being brushed under the rug,” Tomczak said.

Kendall County prosecutors alleged that Esqueda was using the video as his “trump card” if he faced punishment from internal affairs investigations.

Weis said Esqueda had “options if he was worried about corruption.”

“He could have called the FBI. He could have called the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He could have called the Illinois Attorney General’s Office,” Weis said.

On Jan. 29, 2020, the Joliet Police Department had released a public statement about the Will-Grundy Major Crimes Task Force investigation of Lurry’s in-custody death.

On March 6, 2020, the Will County Coroner’s Office ruled Lurry died from heroin, fentanyl and cocaine intoxication, according to a statement from retired Joliet Police Chief Al Roechner.

On June 26, 2020, Roechner said he was notified by Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow‘s Office that their criminal investigation of the Lurry incident had been completed.

Roechner did not release a statement at the time and Glasgow’s office did not release a statement until July 2, 2020, the day after Esqueda gave an interview to CBS2 Chicago about the Lurry video.

Glasgow’s office ruled that Lurry died from a drug overdose and did not “result directly from any action or inaction” by any Joliet police officer.

Glasgow’s office decided not file charges against Joliet Police Sgt. Doug May, who is shown in the video slapping Lurry in the face and saying, “Wake up, [expletive]!”

His office also chose not to charge Joliet police officer Jose Tellez, who stopped the recording of the in-squad video system.

Both officers received fewer than eight days of suspension from the police department for their conduct.

In 2020, Terry Morris, a former Joliet City Council member, questioned the independence of the task force.

But those concerns about the task force were not raised by Morris, former Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk or any other city officials only a year before at the town hall for the fatal police shooting of Bruce Carter. O’Dekirk had blocked the media from asking questions about that shooting.