Jeremy Hylka case sent to new judge, indictment challenged

The grooming case against a former Catholic school teacher was assigned to a new judge and an attorney filed a motion that claimed the indictment had numerous shortcomings.

At Friday’s court hearing Judge Dave Carlson assigned Jeremy Hylka’s case to Judge Kenneth Zelazo, who has been a judge since 2015. Zelazo was once a prosecutor for the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office in the early 2000s and an attorney with Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk’s law firm.

Carlson is the presiding judge of the felony division at the Will County Courthouse and will typically assign cases to other judges or keep them in his courtroom.

Following a Joliet police investigation, Hylka was charged with traveling to meet a child, indecent solicitation of a child, grooming and solicitation of a child in connection with an incident where he was accused of attempting to rendezvous with someone he thought was a 15-year-old boy on April 27 at a Joliet McDonald’s.

Hylka’s attorney, JohnPaul Ivec, filed a motion to either amend the indictment against Hylka or request a bill of particulars, which asks for more details behind the charges.

Prosecutors have not yet responded to the motion.

Ivec’s motion said that all counts in the indictment failed to identify the age and purported age of the alleged victims, failed to identify the nature of the alleged unlawful sexual conduct or unlawful purpose, and failed to adequately set forth the nature and elements of the offenses charged.

“(The) indictment failed to specify the particulars of the offense sufficiently to enable the defendant to prepare his defense and to assure that the charged offenses may serve as a bar to subsequent prosecution arising out of the same conduct,” Ivec’s motion said.

Hylka’s bond forbids him to have contact with the victims in the case but Ivec’s motion argued the “failure of the indictment to adequately identify the alleged victim(s) makes it impossible for the defendant to comply with this condition of bond.”

Carlson also brought up again on Friday his concerns of how Hylka’s case became publicly known even though Judge Sarah Jones sealed it on the grounds it contained information regarding an ongoing investigation. The case was unsealed after Hylka was indicted.

“It caused some concern among my colleagues,” Carlson said.

Carlson said the seal applied not just to the paperwork in the case but also the substance of it.

Will County Assistant State’s Attorney Peter Wilkes said he wasn’t “entirely sure” why an April 30 press conference was held by Joliet police officials. He said that conversations took place between the police and the state’s attorney’s office and he was “reasonably assured it will not happen again.”

The Save Our Siblings group, which claimed credit for “exposing” Hylka, posted a YouTube video of the incident on April 29, the same day as Jones’ seal order.

Joliet police spokesman Dwayne English said at a news conference that “any crimes that are of this nature do elicit a very large response from obviously both the press and the public. We felt it was important to give you guys an opportunity to learn about where we’re at in our investigation of this case.”