People v. Dyer

2025 IL App (1st) 250399-U
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedDecember 19, 2025
Docket1-25-0399
StatusUnpublished

This text of 2025 IL App (1st) 250399-U (People v. Dyer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Dyer, 2025 IL App (1st) 250399-U (Ill. Ct. App. 2025).

Opinion

2025 IL App (1st) 250399-U

FIFTH DIVISION December 19, 2025

No. 1-25-0399

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).

IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST DISTRICT

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, ) Appeal from the ) Circuit Court of Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Cook County ) v. ) No. 19 CR 16761 01 ) JAI DYER, ) The Honorable ) Joanne F. Rosado, Defendant-Appellant. ) Judge, presiding.

JUSTICE TAILOR delivered the judgment of the court. Justices Mikva and Oden Johnson concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶1 Held: The judgment of the trial court is reversed. The trial court reversibly erred when it concluded that defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim was meritless after a Krankel hearing and that the appointment of new counsel was not warranted.

¶2 I. BACKGROUND

¶3 Jai Dyer was indicted for attempted first degree murder, armed robbery, and several counts

of aggravated battery. These charges stemmed from an incident that occurred in the early morning

hours of September 23, 2019, after Dyer’s former girlfriend, Roshonda Smith, sent a text message

to her friend Jimmy Johnson via Facebook to “come over.” After Johnson told Smith he would No. 1-25-0399

call for a ride, Smith messaged back that she would send a car for him on the Uber ride service

application. When Smith texted Johnson that the ride was outside of his home, Johnson got into

the Uber and the driver headed towards Smith’s home. When they were a few blocks away from

Smith’s home, the driver stopped the car, grabbed something from the trunk, opened the rear door

where Johnson was sitting, and then stabbed Johnson several times. The encounter continued

outside the vehicle where driver cut Johnson’s neck. Johnson was taken to the hospital, where he

spoke to police, and was shown a photo array. Johnson identified Dyer as his attacker. Dyer elected

to proceed before a bench trial.

¶4 At trial, the State argued in its opening statement the evidence would show that Dyer was

the man who attacked Johnson, a man with whom Smith was in a “friendly, maybe a friends-with-

benefits relationship.” It argued that Dyer must have been the man who sent the text messages to

Johnson that night, because Smith would testify that she did not send them and Dyer was the only

other person with access to her Facebook account. The defense argued in its opening statement

that Dyer was “not the mystery UBER driver” who attacked Johnson. Defense counsel argued that

the description of the attacker Johnson provided to police did not match Dyer, and that the State

would present no evidence of Dyer accessing Smith’s Facebook account or phone, or any blood

or DNA evidence tying Dyer to the crime.

¶5 Roshonda Smith testified that she and Dyer dated for several months in 2019, but she broke

up with him in early September after he cheated on her. After Smith ended her romantic

relationship with Dyer, they continued to work together at a food manufacturing warehouse. On

September 22, 2019, Smith and Dyer worked the second shift, which ended around 9:30 pm. After

Smith got off work, she went straight home and found Dyer sitting in front of her house, waiting

to talk to her and “trying to get [her] back.” She spoke to him but told him she “wasn’t trying to

2 No. 1-25-0399

hear that.” She then watched him drive off in the “bluish” 2019 Toyota Corolla that she jointly

owned with Dyer.

¶6 Around 10 pm, Smith sent a message through the Facebook Messenger application to

Jimmy Johnson, an old friend. She texted Johnson to “come lay with [her]” and then “passed out.”

When she woke up the next morning, her phone battery was dead. After she charged her phone,

she found messages from Johnson’s brother saying something had happened to Johnson. When

Smith was shown a screenshot that showed a number of messages that were sent from her

Facebook account to Johnson, she admitted that she sent the first message, which said “come sleep

with me, punk” but said she did not send the rest of the messages even though they all appeared to

come from her Facebook account. Smith testified that Dyer had access to her Facebook account,

knew her Facebook password, and had accessed her Facebook account before. She did not change

her Facebook password after they broke up.

¶7 After she received the messages from Johnson’s brother, Smith went to the hospital to see

Johnson, and she suggested that Dyer might have been the man who attacked him. Johnson and

Dyer did not know one other. When Smith was asked why she thought Dyer might have been the

one who attacked Johnson, she said, “[b]ecause if someone says that I sent them an UBER but I

have no *** record of sending an UBER or anything or said that I had a conversation with them

that I did not have, I wasn’t completely drunk to the point that I don’t remember. And it just didn’t

make sense to me why would a person try to, you know, communicate with you, get you in this

UBER, and do harm to you. It don’t make no sense. The only thing I could see is that.”

¶8 Jimmy Johnson testified next. He said that around 2 am on September 23, 2019, he received

a message from Smith via Facebook Messenger telling him to come over. He then tried to call

Smith, but she didn’t answer. Johnson then texted Smith and said he would call a ride but Smith

3 No. 1-25-0399

messaged that she would send an Uber. Johnson tried to call Smith a few more times but she did

not answer. When Johnson received a message that an Uber was waiting outside his home, he went

outside and saw a dark colored four-door car in front of his house. When he asked the driver, “Are

you the UBER?” the driver said yes. Johnson got in the car, and identified Dyer as the driver of

what he believed to be the Uber. Johnson took screen shots of the messages he received from Smith

via Facebook that night and gave them to police. These screenshots were admitted into evidence.

¶9 The Uber driver drove in the general direction of Smith’s house, and when they were a few

blocks away, the Uber driver asked Johnson if he could stop and get his drink. After Johnson

agreed, the driver ran to the trunk, grabbed something, and then opened the door and “poked

[Johnson] in [the] chest with a sharp object” twice. Johnson kicked the man, got out of the car, and

started running. As the Uber driver started chasing him, Johnson slipped on the grass. Johnson felt

the Uber driver cut him on the neck, then Johnson got up and started running again. At one point,

he and the driver stood about 10-15 feet apart, facing one another. The driver was “looking at

[Johnson] crazy” and saying, “that’s my woman, that’s my woman.” The driver then started

running back towards his car. He stopped and picked up some objects from the grass, and then got

back in the car and drove off. Johnson assumed the Uber driver had picked up his wallet and cell

phone, because Johnson had these items when he was in the back of the Uber and assumed they

fell out of his pocket when he slipped on the grass during the attack.

¶ 10 Johnson flagged down a car and asked the occupants to call 911. When the police arrived,

they called an ambulance for Johnson and he was taken to the hospital. He received 42 stitches in

his neck and two staples in his chest.

¶ 11 When Johnson was interviewed by police, he told them the Uber driver, who he had never

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Related

People v. Bull
705 N.E.2d 824 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1998)
People v. Hall
743 N.E.2d 126 (Illinois Supreme Court, 2000)
People v. Bailey
872 N.E.2d 420 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 2007)
People v. Moore
797 N.E.2d 631 (Illinois Supreme Court, 2003)
People v. Krankel
464 N.E.2d 1045 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1984)
People v. Abadia
767 N.E.2d 341 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 2001)
People v. Pecoraro
677 N.E.2d 875 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1997)
People v. Johnson
636 N.E.2d 485 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1994)
People v. Tolefree
2011 IL App (1st) 100689 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 2011)
People v. Dyer
2024 IL App (1st) 220477-U (Appellate Court of Illinois, 2024)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2025 IL App (1st) 250399-U, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-dyer-illappct-2025.