Man haunted by sex offender with same name & birthdate

2-12-2014 New York:

Imagine not being able to land a job because you have the same name and birth date as a convicted sex offender. A Buffalo man is facing that very tough situation right now.

It is an indescribable frustration facing John Lamar Johnson, a North Buffalo man with family to provide for, who says he’s not giving up until his name is cleared.

When your name is John Johnson, you know you’re not the only one out there.

“I told my mom I wanted to change it. She said no, I gave you that name,” John said.

Unfortunately for this John Johnson, there is another man in Buffalo who shares the same name, the same date of birth, and just happens to be a registered sex offender.

“There is no way I should be associated with this guy. We don’t look the same,” he said.

They don’t have the same middle name either. But that doesn’t matter. Because John C. Johnson the sex offender is now haunting John L. Johnson the father of 5, who’s never been convicted of a serious crime.

Edgar Coker’s name to be taken off Virginia sex offender list years after false accusation

UPDATE 2-18: After long legal battle, Va. man removed from sex offenders registry

See also below: Life better for young man exonerated in rape case

2-12-2014 Virginia:

A Stafford County judge has ordered a Virginia man’s name removed from the state’s sex offender registry and his conviction vacated after the court ruled that he received ineffective counsel from his attorney.

Edgar Coker Jr. was 15 in 2007 when his attorney, Denise Rafferty, advised him to plead guilty to raping a friend rather than risk being sentenced to years in an adult prison. Two months after he went into juvenile detention, the then-14-year-old girl recanted her accusation. Nonetheless, Coker spent 17 months in a juvenile prison and his name was added to the sex offender registry.

But it’s not easy to undo a conviction.

“It took a team of half a dozen attorneys, dozens of law students, a pro bono law firm, a legal aid justice center and two clinics at U-Va. law school,” said Matthew Engle, director of the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, which helped Coker.

“And several private investigators,” added Deirdre Enright, the co-director of the clinic.

“It took that team six years,” Engle said, “to undo what happened in 15 minutes in juvenile court.”