Prosecutors have dropped nine out of 11 felony charges against a Joliet man after a judge granted a defense motion that argued a police search of a vehicle was unlawful.
On June 5, 2025, Jesse Tucker, 30, was indicted on 11 charges that alleged he unlawfully possessed a .40-caliber Glock handgun, ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana on May 20, 2025 in Joliet.
Last week, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow’s Office dropped nine of those charges following a July 9 ruling from Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak, court records show.
Tucker’s attorneys with Joliet law firm King and Bondi filed a motion that contended Joliet police officers’ search of a vehicle was “unlawful” because it went “far beyond” the “scope of a protective sweep.”
In a court filing, prosecutors said officers had a residence in Joliet under surveillance and saw Tucker standing next to a vehicle. The vehicle belonged to a relative.
Officers saw a loaded .40-caliber Glock handgun in the front driver’s side floorboard of the vehicle and found marijuana, ecstasy, amphetamine in the vehicle’s center console, prosecutors said.
Officers found Tucker had two bags of cocaine in his pocket, prosecutors said.
Tucker’s attorneys argued that because the search of the vehicle “exceeded the permissible scope of a search,” prosecutors cannot use any of the items recovered in the vehicle in their case against Tucker.
In Bertani-Tomczak’s ruling, she said Officer Kyle Killian was using binoculars and could see Tucker in the driveway next to the vehicle, according to a court transcript.
“The defendant was not in the car and he never got in the car. There was a child and it’s unknown if someone was in the car,” Bertani-Tomczak said.
She said Tucker was “arrested without incident” as he was going to the front door of his home.
Bertani-Tomczak said Killain had run to the area, seen the vehicle, “glances in and opens the door, sees the gun [and] shuts the door.”
“Based upon everything I’ve heard, I find that there is no reasonable or articulable suspicion presented by the state to cause them to perform this—I guess he called it an officer safety check—so I’m going to grant the [defense] motion,” Bertani-Tomczak said.
The two remaining charges against Tucker are possession of cocaine with intent to deliver and unlawful possession of cocaine.
Bertani-Tomczak also allowed for Tucker’s pretrial release under the SAFE-T Act.
Tucker’s attorneys argued the remaining admissible evidence in the case means prosecutors can no longer meet their burden to keep him in pretrial detention, according to a motion.
Tucker’s attorneys said he can be released with “reasonable restrictions.”
Last year, the King and Bondi law firm had won a motion to quash the arrest and suppress evidence in a 2024 case against Deamontae Hunter, 27, based on a Will County sheriff’s deputy’s violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Hunter’s case was ultimately dismissed.
