The trial of a Rock Falls man accused of home invasion, sex assault, and battery was to begin Tuesday in Whiteside County Circuit Court. Instead, a Whiteside County judge assigned to the case last week will announce at 8:30 that morning whether the case against Daniel J. Yanes will proceed to trial or if it will be dismissed on claims that his right to a speedy trial was violated.

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. He demanded a speedy trial and was released from jail after posting bond.

Since that time, the charges have been amended three times, once on Oct. 28 when an aggravated battery charge was added, and then on Oct. 30, when an aggravated domestic battery charge was added, then again on Jan. 12 when another aggravated battery charge was added.

At issue over the past month are the defense’s claims that Yanes’s right to a speedy trial has been violated, problems with minute entries in court documents, and a judge who the defense says should have recused himself when deciding to reject a negotiated plea agreement on Dec. 11, but then went on to preside over and deny a motion to dismiss on Dec. 26.

Case history

A jury pretrial hearing took place Oct. 30, with the case continued to a pretrial conference and possible plea hearing then set for Dec. 11. No jury trial date was set, according to court documents.

Judge James Heuerman turned down the plea agreement on Dec. 11, another jury pretrial conference was set for Dec. 15, and the trial was set to begin Jan. 13

Defense attorney James Mertes filed a motion to dismiss the case a couple of hours prior to that Dec. 15 pretrial conference. Heuerman at that time set a hearing for Dec. 26, when he denied Mertes’s motion to dismiss the case, and the trial date remained set for Jan. 13.

At issue at that Dec. 26 hearing was whether too many days had passed since Yanes had made a demand for a speedy trial. 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 included 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 the hearing for 1:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 26, to address the motion to dismiss.

At that Dec. 26 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 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 would begin Jan. 13.

With that date approaching, Mertes filed a “motion to vacate the court’s void denial of defendant’s first amended motion to dismiss” on Thursday, Jan. 8.

The motion maintains Heuerman should have recused himself from the case on Dec. 11 after rejecting the plea, which means that his Dec. 26 decision to deny the motion to dismiss should be vacated, Mertes said. Mertes also filed a statement of facts agreed upon by him and Whiteside County State’s Attorney Colleen Buckwalter.

During a hearing on Friday, Jan. 9, Buckwalter and Mertes discussed with the court the statement of facts and the most recent motion, which states that during an informal meeting in judges’ chambers on Dec. 11 that Heuerman had said he was going to accept the plea agreement. Heuerman ended up denying that agreement on Dec. 11 after hearing a victim impact statement, according to Mertes’s motion.

During the Jan. 9 hearing, Heuerman said that during the Dec. 11 informal meeting, he had used the phrase that he was “highly likely” to accept the agreement, according to Mertes. Heuerman recused himself from the case on Jan. 9, and Judge Hany Khoury was assigned to it. A second charge of aggravated battery was added to the list of charges on Monday, Jan. 12.

During Monday’s hearing with Khoury, Mertes continued pressing for dismissal on the grounds that the 160-day speedy deadline threshold had been crossed, that Heuerman’s denial of the motion to dismiss should be vacated, and said that it is clear under the law that the case should be dismissed.

Mertes on Monday said the court didn’t need to resolve Heuerman and the attorneys’ different recollections of the Dec. 11 informal meeting. He said he wanted to focus on a window of time from Dec. 11 to Jan. 13, and that no trial date was set during an Oct. 30 pretrial conference, according to the court document minute entries. That becomes important because of how it affects which side caused the delay.

“The record does not reflect whether the delay was allocated to the defendant,” Mertes said, adding that when the court rejected the plea agreement, ”the occasioned delay was not attributable to the defendant."

“The defendant did not occasion the delay of Dec. 11 to Jan. 13,” Mertes said. He said that Jan. 13 was the 14th day beyond the 160-day speedy trial deadline.

Buckwalter disagreed, saying the delay is not attributable to the state because Yanes agreed to go to court Dec. 11.

Khoury said he would take the matter under advisement and would rule at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. If he does not dismiss the case, the trial will begin at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Eighty jurors will be summoned. Mertes said those jurors also are being questioned for another jury trial at the Whiteside County Courthouse this week. He said jurors excused from serving at that trial will be part of the Yanes jury pool and questioned for selection.

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