A Tennessee man who thought a viral video might clear his name instead finds himself headed to prison. Jerome Nchiyako Dooley, who was serving probation for a sexual battery conviction, recently had his freedom revoked by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals after a series of social media posts and rule violations.
The trouble started when Dooley posted a video to TikTok claiming he had been falsely accused. In the clip, he shared a photo of the victim, her name, and her location, calling her the person who “destroyed my life.”
However, the court pointed out a major flaw in that narrative: Dooley had already stood in a courtroom, raised his right hand, and pleaded guilty to the crime under oath.
This wasn’t Dooley’s first brush with probation trouble. He originally received a five-year suspended sentence in 2023 following an incident involving a University of Tennessee freshman he met on Tinder. While his initial charges included rape, he took a deal to plead guilty to sexual battery.
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Since then, his time on supervised release has been rocky:
- Prohibited Contact: He was caught multiple times contacting a domestic violence victim from a separate case in Davidson County, despite a strict “no contact” order.
- Registry Violations: After being released from a short jail stint for a previous violation, he failed to update his address on the sex offender registry within the required 48-hour window.
- Social Media Misuse: He failed to register his TikTok account with authorities, a standard requirement for his probation.
“The Rules Just Don’t Apply”
During the court proceedings, probation officer Katelyn Wickson testified that when she confronted Dooley about his living situation and registry requirements, he told her “that the rules didn’t apply to him.”
That attitude didn’t sit well with Judge G. Scott Green.
During the revocation hearing, the judge expressed deep frustration, noting that he had “bent over backwards” to help Dooley succeed on probation.
The judge described the TikTok video—which targeted the victim after Dooley had admitted his guilt in court—as something that “offends this court to its very core.”
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Dooley attempted to appeal the decision, arguing that the TikTok video was just him expressing his innocence and shouldn’t be grounds for prison. He also suggested the judge should have stepped down from the case because Dooley had criticized him in the video.
The Court of Criminal Appeals, led by Judge Jill Bartee Ayers, didn’t buy it. In a ruling released today, the court affirmed that Dooley’s actions showed he simply could not follow the rules of the community.
The judges noted that contacting victims and failing to follow registry laws are “non-technical” violations, which are more than enough to justify sending someone back to behind bars.
Dooley will now serve the remainder of his original five-year sentence in the Department of Corrections.
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