The New Year turned five days old today. And out of those five days, the Will County Courthouse was only open for three of them.

That may not be a lot of days, but they were still action-packed and exciting. How action packed and exciting? Well, let's take a look:

• Judge Sarah Jones found New Lenox resident Joseph Messina guilty of punching 29-year-old Eric Bartels into a coma outside the Mokena bar 191 South in July 2009. A friend of Messina had testified that it was actually someone else who delivered the fateful blow, but Jones apparently didn't buy what the friend was saying. Messina, 24, faces up to five years in prison but could get off with probation.
• A Harvey man is afraid guards at the Will County jail will kill him for filing lawsuits against six of them, his lawyer said. The lawsuits claim the guards beat 29-year-old William Jenkins on two separate occasions since he was locked up in October 2011. Jenkins went to jail for allegedly breaking into a house in Frankfort.
• A Lombard women pleaded not guilty to allegedly ripping off thousands of dollars from the Frankfort dentist she was working for as a receptionist. Dorothy Lynn Guerrero, 28, also faces a coke charge.
• An Indiana man claims he broke a tooth after biting into an inordinately bony Subway pulled pork sandwich. He is suing the Bolingbrook company he says supplied the pork and bones to the Subway, and is also going after the Subway's owner.
• A Frankfort lawyer charged with trying to put a hit on the estranged wife he allegedly beat up in a courthouse hallway asked to get his bond money back so he can hire an attorney. Judge Daniel Rozak said he can have his $2,500 bond back from the 2010 courthouse hallway attack case to pay for a lawyer in his 2012 murder-for-hire case. Let's hope he doesn't use it to try to pay a hitman.
• She wasn't in court, in fact she's not even in Illinois anymore, but a Georgia man told us he lived with Linda Fellenbaum for 10 days after she disappeared. He also said she made him Thanksgiving dinner, and it looks like she may have even done the dishes.

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