IF A LAW DOES NOT EXIST, MAKE IT UP!

Corey Eason doesn't proclaim to be a saint. At 26, he already has two felony drug convictions on his record, one for dealing cocaine and the other for possession of cocaine and marijuana. But the Bloomington man felt good Tuesday morning when he walked out of the McLean County Law and Justice Center. McLean County prosecutors agreed to overturn a third, more dubious felony -- failure to register as a sex offender.

What's unclear is how Eason ended up being convicted of that crime in the first place. According to Illinois State Police, the agency that maintains the names and addresses of Illinois' sex offenders, Eason never should have been placed on the list. He was convicted of a sex offense as a juvenile in Livingston County in 1995, but the state didn't begin requiring minors to register their addresses with authorities until 1999. So why was Eason charged with failing to register three times during the last year in McLean County?

It's a question Bloomington attorney Leann Hill began asking after Eason approached her last month hoping to get his picture removed from the state's sex offender Web site. She turned to the county's probation department, which started questioning the state police about the matter. Hill believed their answer, confirming Eason should not be considered a sex offender, would persuade county prosecutors to overturn his conviction in March for failing to inform police about an address change.

With a pending case for drug possession, Hill said prosecutors initially refused to acknowledge the wrongful conviction. But during a hearing Tuesday, prosecutors vacated Eason's conviction for failing to register. Eason was placed on two years' probation for the drug possession. "The law works in mysterious ways," McLean County Circuit Judge Ronald Dozier told Eason during the hearing. "I'm glad we got this straightened out before it got too much further down the line."

Rick Hector, spokesman for the Illinois State Police, said there's an investigation to determine how Eason ended up on the sex offender registry. State police are provided information about known sex offenders so another law enforcement agency likely is to blame, Hector said. Mark Messman, the county's chief felony prosecutor, said he's unsure why Eason was charged or convicted of the crime. By looking at the original sex offense, either the prosecutor or public defender assigned to his case could have recognized he's not required to register. "Making good charging decisions is one of the most important things we do here," Messman said. "It's a system run by people and mistakes can happen. Somewhere along the line, somebody should have caught this."

Eason, who says he knows he hasn't made the best decisions in life, said being listed as a sex offender has been a terrible stigma during the last three years. He was originally forced to register after being paroled from prison for dealing cocaine in 2002. "I'm just tired of dealing with it," Eason said. "It just made my life miserable. I've been through a lot over this. I've lost jobs, my house. Police harass me. Prosecutors call me child molester in open court. I couldn't even go out in public without having people thinking I'm a sex offender." Eason said a lawsuit against the state and perhaps even the county could be forthcoming. He's working on retaining an attorney, and says McLean County won't be spared just because prosecutors did the right thing by overturning his wrongful conviction. "They know that something was wrong. That's why they gave me the deal," Eason said after leaving the courthouse with one less felony on his record. "They think I'm just going to go away. No. This is just the beginning

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