Retired Joliet police Sgt. Javier Esqueda arrived for trial on December 16, 2024, facing four felony charges over the release of a police video. Instead of presenting its case, the prosecution asked the judge to dismiss every count.
On Monday, December 16, 2024 — the day Sgt. Javier Esqueda's two-day bench trial was set to begin — Kendall County State's Attorney Eric Weis filed a motion to dismiss all four counts of official misconduct against him. Kendall County Circuit Judge Jody Gleason granted the motion. Esqueda, a 29-year veteran of the Joliet Police Department who retired in July 2022 facing the prospect of 20 years in prison, $400,000 in fines, and the loss of his pension, walked out of the courthouse with no conviction and no remaining state criminal exposure.
Weis's filing offered an unusually candid reason: while the case had been pending, "the People have received additional materials which were not originally tendered to the State's Attorney's Office, which have caused our office to reevaluate the evidence in this case." It did not detail what had been withheld, or by whom.
Esqueda's underlying conduct — the act for which the State of Illinois charged him with four felonies — was giving a Joliet television reporter dashcam footage from January 29, 2020. The video showed officers in custody of Eric Lurry, 37, a Black man who had been arrested in a drug-buy bust. Lurry was handcuffed in the back of a squad car when an officer slapped him across the face, called him a "bitch," held his head and restricted his airway, and pushed a police baton into his mouth. Lurry was then taken to St. Joseph Medical Center, where he died. The Will County coroner ruled the death an overdose.
The officers involved received six-day suspensions. The Joliet Police Department did not initially release the dashcam footage to the public. In July 2020, Esqueda gave it to WBBM-TV reporter Dana Kozlov, who aired it.
Within three months of the broadcast, the Kendall County State's Attorney's office had indicted him for the leak. The Joliet Police Officer's Association — the local union — held a vote on whether to expel him. Members voted 35 to 1 to throw him out.
The case dragged for over four years. Esqueda's defense team, led by attorney Jeff Tomczak, mounted a public-interest defense: the video disclosed misconduct, the public had a right to see it, and the felony "official misconduct" theory the state was using turned every act of in-house whistleblowing into a crime carrying decades of prison. The defense did not get a chance to present that argument to a fact-finder. The state withdrew the case before opening statements.
The dismissal did not happen in a vacuum. The week before the dismissal, the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul released an investigatory report on the Joliet Police Department concluding that the department had engaged in a pattern of unreasonable force and a systemic failure to hold officers accountable for misconduct. The report cited the Lurry death prominently. The dismissal filing did not identify whether the new material came from that investigation.
Esqueda is now suing the City of Joliet, the police department, and the union in federal court over the retaliation. His federal civil-rights complaint alleges that the criminal charges, the union expulsion, and the actions taken against him were carried out in retaliation for protected First Amendment speech — disclosing police misconduct of public concern to a journalist. The federal action remains pending.
