Did the priest plead guilty, or no contest?

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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This blog points out a discrepancy between two reports about what happened in court to a Florida priest caught up in a sting operation in Waynesville last year.

The Citizen-Times reported last week that the Episcopal priest pleaded guilty:

WAYNESVILLE – An Episcopal priest found guilty Thursday of soliciting sex from undercover Waynesville police officers is the last of seven men to make guilty pleas after being charged in a sting operation last summer in park restrooms.

Michael Royce Penland, 46, pleaded guilty to soliciting crimes against nature and was ordered to pay court costs and stay away from Haywood County recreation property, according to the Haywood County clerk of courts office.

Penland resigned from his position as a youth minister at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton, Fla., in September, following his arrest, according to church meeting records.

Waynesville police made the arrests during a three-month undercover sting at two city park restrooms.

But the Palm Beach Post reported that the priest pleaded no contest, a plea significantly different than a guilty plea:

A priest who resigned as a youth director of a Boca Raton church last year after he was charged with soliciting sex pleaded no contest to the allegations Thursday.

The Rev. Michael Royce Penland, 47, will not go to jail as a result of the June 28 charge of soliciting sex from an undercover male officer in a park restroom in Waynesville, N.C., his attorney said.

“I think he’s relieved it’s over,” North Carolina attorney Albert Marvin Messer said. The court did not issue a judgment of guilty or not guilty, Messer said.

After Penland’s plea, which doesn’t admit guilt while also not contesting the charges, the former St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church youth ministry director must pay court costs and stay away from recreational property in Haywood County, N.C., where he was arrested in June.

Penland “denied the allegations that were brought against him, but he thought it was in the best interest not to proceed to a trial in this manner after advice from his counsel,” Messer said. Penland “did not admit to what they said he did.”

Police charged him with “solicitation for crimes against nature,” a misdemeanor. They alleged that he followed an officer into a bathroom, asked whether he could go home and have sex with him and later tried to follow him home in his car.

Hmmmmmm.