By Rummana Hussain
Chicago Sun Times
CHICAGO, Ill. — When Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez was formally cleared in a 1993 gang-related murder at the 26th and California courthouse last June, he smiled thinking about his “new start.”
“Let bygones be bygones,” the exonerated man said.
On Thursday, Jimenez, 31, was back before a Cook County judge on a felony drug charge.
Jimenez had 13 grams of suspected LSD in his Park Ridge home when Chicago Police and Park Ridge officers combed the residence with a search warrant Wednesday, said Becky Walters, an assistant state’s attorney. Three loaded weapons also were found in the home: a 12-gauge Charles Daly shotgun, a Rock Island Armory .45-caliber semiautomatic and a Glock .40-caliber semiautomatic, according to a police report.
Also discovered in the unemployed man’s home were six GPS navigation devices, six boxes of ammunition, two digital scales and numerous plastic baggies, Walters said.
Jimenez was cited for possession of ammunition without a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification Card and three counts of possession of a firearm without a valid FOID card. He also was cited for theft of lost or mislaid property because the GPS navigation devices apparently were stolen goods, the police report said.
Judge James Brown ordered Jimenez held in lieu of $40,000 bail on the drug possession charge.
The Chicago Police had executed the search warrant at Jimenez’s home after receiving “credible information about weapons and other illegal contraband being kept there,” Chicago Police spokesman Roderick Drew said.
In 2009 when prosecutors dropped charges against Jimenez in the killing of 19-year-old Eric Morro, Jimenez was described by his lawyers as the youngest person in U.S. history to be wrongly convicted and exonerated.
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