13 Years after filing a guilty plea in a Rutherford County Courtroom, Matthew B. Foley has filed a petition for post-conviction relief.

Foley was only 15-years-old when he entered a negotiated plea of guilty to a charge of facilitation of especially aggravated kidnapping. At the time, such a charge did not require someone to be registered as a sex offender.

After Foley was released on probation, he violated the probation terms and was re-incarcerated in 2011. At that time he was told that he needed to register as a sex offender. Upon his release from a state prison, he refused to register as a sex offender and was rearrested.

The state later removed "Facilitation of Especially Aggravated Kidnapping" from their list of charges required to register as a sex offender. It was the second time the state removed it from the list. The bad news for Foley, it was added back in 2012 and he was again told he had to register. When he failed to register again, he was once again arrested.

Looking back, Foley was arrested, released and re-arrested at least two times for not registering as a sex offender because the state kept removing and adding the charge to their list.

In 2013, the original charge against Foley was retired by the courts, but that did not keep Foley from being arrested again in 2014 for violating terms of the sex offender policy.

In most cases it would be impossible to talk the courts into rehearing a case that dates back some 13 or more years. Regardless, Foley moved forward with asking the courts for post-conviction relief in 2015. His case was later turned down even though he argued the state violated a material condition of his 2002 plea agreement. That material condition did not require him to register as a sex offender when originally convicted. The courts said that he was past the statue of limitations for an appeal.

On November 1, 2017, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee filed documents allowing for an evidentiary hearing on the merits of Foley's claims for post-conviction relief. The evidentiary hearing will take place in the near future and Foley, depending on how the case goes, may not be required to register as a sex offender as he was originally told by the courts.

More Details on the case as Foley was with an adult when the charges were first filed:

Court documents show that there is much more to the case as Foley, who was 15 at the time, was with a grown man when a rape reportedly occurred. An excerpt from the documents stated:

"And it's based on conduct occurring on October the 27th of 2001. And generally what the proof would show is that [the Petitioner] and an adult, who is currently under indictment in this court for aggravated rape and aggravated kidnapping--that they were riding around. That they observed a 13 year-old girl that they did not know at the movie theater at Stones River. That they essentially grabbed this girl, drove her around Murfreesboro. They ended up at . . . Nice's Mill Dam where the adult took her out of the car and into the woods, and ultimately raped her. During the course of the rape, she suffered . . . some type of vaginal tear, which elevated it from rape to aggravated rape."

Court documents went on to read:

"[S]he answered (the victim) after the older guy got in the car, he told me to crawl in the front seat. This is before the rape. I saw him pull a knife out a little..."

The prosecutor told the courts that the victim testified that she then saw the older man, John Rowe (20 at the time), place the knife underneath his shirt.

John Paul Rowe, who is classified as a "violent" offender, was convicted of aggravated rape in 2001.

Source:

Case No. F-52128 David M. Bragg, Judge

Oct. 2015: No. F-52128 David M. Bragg, Judge