photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lance Yoder appears in Douglas County District Court on Friday, March 28, 2025.

A Lawrence man was convicted Tuesday of one count of attempted rape after pleading no contest in a deal with the Douglas County district attorney, who agreed to drop more serious charges.

The defendant, Lance Yoder, walked out of Judge Sally Pokorny’s courtroom a free man Tuesday, though a felon, and is scheduled to return in two months for sentencing by a different judge.

Yoder was originally charged with three counts of rape, but one count had been dismissed earlier because of the statute of limitations. At his preliminary hearing in June of last year, a 27-year-old woman testified that Yoder had repeatedly sexually abused her when she was a young child. In the case barred by the statute of limitations, another woman recounted similar abuse.

Judge Amy Hanley at that hearing also heard a recorded conversation between the 27-year-old and Yoder in which the two discuss the alleged abuse in 2008 and Yoder apologizes, saying “I regret anything I did that hurt you.” In the recording, made with the assistance of police, Yoder doesn’t deny touching her inappropriately but claims he “stopped immediately” when she asked him to. He is also heard blaming “a Black guy” for an act of rape that she had accused him of as she slept.

Yoder was scheduled to stand trial for rape next week, but his attorney, Branden Smith, told Hanley on Friday that he was “99.9%” certain there would be a plea agreement instead, as his client was considering which of two deals to accept. Smith asked Hanley to cancel the April 7 trial date, but she declined to do so in case a plea deal did not materialize.

Because Hanley’s court was not in session this week, Smith and Douglas County DA Dakota Loomis presented the plea deal to Judge Sally Pokorny. The case will return to Hanley on June 11 for sentencing. In addition to whatever Hanley orders, Yoder will be required to register as an offender for life.

In return for the dropped rape counts, Yoder agreed to not ask the court for a downward departure in his sentence, which will be informed by the results of a pending presentence investigation.

As the Journal-World reported, Yoder had been employed as a janitor by the Lawrence school district since September 2022, and he was assigned to Schwegler Elementary School, according to district spokesperson Julie Boyle. Boyle said he was a night custodian and was last at work on Feb. 28, 2024.

Yoder has been terminated from the district, and his crime is not linked to his later employment in the district.

He remains out of custody on a $100,000 own-recognizance bond.