A Rock Falls man will stand trial on home invasion, sex assault, and battery charges after a Whiteside County judge on Friday denied a motion to dismiss the case.

Whiteside County Circuit Court Judge James Heuerman ruled Friday that Daniel J. Yanes’s right to a speedy trial has not been violated, meaning Yanes will stand trial Jan. 13 in a 2022 case accusing him of home invasion, criminal sexual assault, aggravated battery, and aggravated domestic battery.

At issue on Friday was whether too many days had passed since Yanes had made a demand for a speedy trial. Yanes’s attorney, James Mertes, said that had happened and the case should be dismissed.

“The law in the state of Illinois is very clear,” Mertes said.

Yanes, 48, was taken into custody on April 11, 2022, on charges of home invasion and criminal sexual assault in connection with an Illinois State Police investigation into an Oct. 1, 2021, incident in Whiteside County.

Since that time, the charges have been amended twice, once on Oct. 28 when the aggravated battery charge was added, and then again on Oct. 30, when the aggravated domestic battery charge was added. A plea hearing was set for Dec. 11; Heuerman turned down the agreement, and a pretrial conference was set for Dec. 15. Mertes filed the motion to dismiss a couple of hours prior to that scheduled pretrial conference.

According to Mertes’s motion to dismiss, under Illinois law, every person on pretrial release or recognizance is to be tried within 160 days from the date a defendant demands trial, unless “the delay is occasioned by the defendant.”

Mertes’s motion to dismiss, filed Dec. 15, claimed Yanes’s right to a speedy trial had been violated by six days and included a breakdown of dates and the number of days that had elapsed since April 12, 2022 – the date that Yanes demanded the speedy trial. The list covered the dates in which Yanes did not cause the delays, according to the motion, and includes the four days that passed from Dec. 11, when Heuerman turned down the plea agreement, through Dec. 15. Over Mertes’s objection, Heuerman on Dec. 15 set a hearing for 1:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 26, to address the motion to dismiss.

At that hearing, Whiteside County State’s Attorney Colleen Buckwalter went through the timeline of the case, disagreeing with Mertes’s evaluation of when the state’s actions caused the trial to be delayed. There are no court transcripts for some of the hearings that were part of the record, she noted.

Heuerman said he also did not agree with Mertes’s computation, which Mertes said was sitting at 177 days on Dec. 26 – saying that in his own review of the case, Heuerman had determined the case had not crossed the speedy trial deadline and was instead sitting at 156 days.

Heuerman pointed to an earlier court date that included action in regard to another case Yanes was involved in, as well as action at the Oct. 30 court date, in which an open-ended continuance was set and did not include a jury trial date, as the reasons his day count came in lower than Mertes’s.

Heuerman denied the motion to dismiss and reiterated that Yanes’s trial will begin Jan. 13.

Home invasion carries a sentence of 6 to 30 years in prison. Criminal sexual assault carries a 4- to 15-year prison sentence.