Don Armstrong, felony thief (for now)

For those just tuning in, Don Armstrong was an Episcopal priest here in Colorado who:

1. … ran Grace & St Stephens Episcopal in Colorado Springs.
2. … served as the Shadow Bishop of Colorado for many, many years, acting as the spokesman for Episcopal conservatives in the state and unofficial leader of the  opposition to the diocese.
3. … despite leading the largest church and congregation in the state, never paid any of the canonically required dues to the diocese as a whole (because, y’know, they were all a bunch of liberals).
4. … ran his parish as a little fiefdom, and a personally enriching one as well, drawing in a very comfortable salary.
5. … pulled his parish out of the Episcopal Church in May 2007, one jump ahead of the diocese indicting him in a church court for being a bad priest (my paraphrase of the charges, which included financial malfeasance and theft of $400K).
6. … denied any charges as to same, and, when defrocked by the diocese, basically gave them the finger and a loud “neener-neener.”
7. … tried to hold onto Grace & St Stephens  property, even though church law and Colorado legal precedent indicated he couldn’t.
8. … loaded said property with a huge mortgage debt as a “poison pill” against the diocese suing to take it back.
9. … was finally forced to vacate the property in April 2009 in favor of the Episcopal faithful who were worshiping elsewhere in the interim.  His portion of the congregation moved to a new church.
10. … was indicted by a grand jury on 20 counts of felony theft in 2009, including misappropriating a seminary scholarship fund to pay his own kids’ way to school.
11. … is under investigation by the IRS for similar shenanigans.
12. … was stoutly defended by his followers as a martyr who was being persecuted for his beliefs.

And … just pled “no contest” to those fraud charges.

Pueblo special prosecutor Stephen Jones announced Friday that former Episcopal priest Donald Armstrong, ex-pastor of Grace Church in Colorado Springs, has entered a “no-contest” plea to felony theft in exchange for a deferred judgment and sentence.

Armstrong, 61, indicted by a 4th Judicial District grand jury in 2009 on 20 counts of felony theft, was accused of embezzling almost $300,000 from church and trust funds over eight years to pay for his two children’s college.

More info here.

The official Episcopal news service reports (drawing on the official diocesan statement):

Donald Armstrong, a former Episcopal priest and former rector of Grace and St. Stephen’s Church, has pleaded no contest to a felony theft charge and guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge involving the historic downtown Colorado Springs church, according to a Sept. 17 statement released by the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado.

Armstrong had been charged with 20 counts of felony theft, stemming from financial improprieties during his tenure at the $17 million church, an architectural and social icon in southern Colorado for more than a century.

Larry Hitt, chancellor of the Denver-based diocese, said … “We believe that Armstrong’s entry of a ‘no contest’ plea to a class 3 felony theft charge [deferred judgment and sentence] and his effective guilty plea to a class 1 misdemeanor theft charge constitute a tacit acknowledgment of the truth of the criminal charges against him,” Hitt said in the statement.

[…] In Colorado, felony charges are categorized in six different classes, with class 1 being the most serious charge carrying the harshest penalty. Class 3 felony convictions may carry a sentence of at least four to 12 years and/or fines ranging from $3,000 to $750,000. Misdemeanors are lesser charges and carry lesser sentencing recommendations.

Hitt said “Armstrong’s theft constituted an abuse of trust and a betrayal by a priest of the church. His unlawful actions and efforts to divert the focus of the dispute away from his own behavior caused harm and suffering for the church, its clergy, its membership and the poor whom we are called to serve.”

But, he added, “We pray for healing for all affected by his actions, including Armstrong and his family. We also hope that he will be sentenced to make full restitution of the money he took from the church.”

Or is it quite that simple?  Over at the hyper-conservative Virtue Online, we get a bit different spin.

Fr. Don Armstrong, rector of St. George’s Anglican Church and formerly rector of Grace & St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, pled no contest to a single misdemeanor charge on Friday in Colorado Fourth Judicial Court, bringing to a conclusion an almost five year investigation and prosecution of Armstrong, the former Executive Director of the Anglican Communion Institute.

“The plea to which I agreed is an Alford plea which is for the purpose of accepting an offer of a plea agreement without admission of guilt, which was in this case essentially to drop twenty felony counts in exchange for a single misdemeanor.” Armstrong told VOL in an e-mail from his home.”

“This misdemeanor, which includes a restitution phase in which I am confident we will also be able to find an appropriate way forward, brings an end to my own criminal prosecution and spares both Colorado Springs congregations, St. George’s Anglican and Grace Episcopal, and the Episcopal Diocese from a lengthy trial that would serve only to diminish all of our witness.”

“Certainly we believe this sudden conclusion was Divine intervention. The Lord has blessed our congregation in so many ways, purging resentment and contempt for our persecutors from our hearts, instilling us with a renewed spirit of mission and outreach, and giving us a growing and deepening love for our Lord and one another. We have experienced a wonderful flourishing of faith under Bishops Minns and Bena in the midst of this intense and expensive persecution.”

He did it all for the congregation. How nice of him.

An Alford plea, btw, is:

Alford plea (also referred to as Alford guilty plea and Alford doctrine) in the law of the United States is a guilty plea in criminal court, where the defendant does not admit the act and asserts innocence. Under the Alford plea the defendant admits that sufficient evidence exists with which the prosecution could likely convince a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s also referred to as a nolo contendere or “no contest” plea.

The official parish statement (no doubt written, or least vetted, by Armstrong) says:

In preparation for the now canceled trial we have become convinced even more strongly that controversies within the larger denominational church were the catalyst for the Diocese’s investigation and complaint, for the purpose of silencing our bold and successful defense of orthodoxy through our parish’s life, discipline, and teaching ministry.
.

We believe that the courts are not the place to deal with theological differences, and that to have allowed this dispute to continue to be played out in the news by going to trial would have served only to diminish all Christian witness. With this plea offer now in place such further harm to the entire church in this already difficult age for Christianity will be prevented.
.

We further believe the disparity between the magnitude of charges made against Father Armstrong by the Episcopal Diocese and the final content of the plea agreement vindicates not only Father Armstrong, but also clearly affirms our confidence that we ran an effective and well managed church in our days at the helm of Grace & St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, and continue to do so at St. George’s Anglican Church.

Got that? Because he took a plea, it demonstrates he’s really innocent.

Oh, and, by the way, the charges in question were made by the grand jury, not the diocese of Colorado (though they brought the matter to the DA’s attention), and based on a very lengthy investigation, carting off of crates of paper, etc.

Armstrong added later:

Plea agreements are always slightly messy and always a matter of give and take. Bottom line here is that they started with 20 Felony counts and we walked out of the court room with a misdemeanor, not to mention avoiding a trial in which no wins from the slug fest, and in which you risk the jury spitting the baby no matter how rock solid your case is, just because they like the prosecutor or something.

Yeah … plea out because the jury might “like the prosecutor or something.” Nice, but not quite what an Alford plea means.

So,on Friday a fictitious 21st felony count that had no basis in fact or history was created and added to address the original grand jury indictment and to assure proper jurisdiction. I plead no contest to that and it was differed.

I think that’s supposed to be “deferred.”

That was a procedural means to get to the real end, a misdemeanor. A fictitious misdemeanor was added, also without content-basis in fact or history, to which I entered an Alford plea…in other words, not an admission of any guilt but to accept the offer to reduce 20 felony counts to single misdemeanor.

So, long story short: 20 felony counts reduced to a single misdemeanor. I still maintain my total innocence, but have avoided a lengthy trial in which everyone looses, and put an end to this religious embarrassment.

Alas, the religious embarrassment continues …

Note, by the way, that as much as I dislike both Armstrong’s theology and his comity whilst he was a priest in the dicoese, the bottom line is that this was not some sort of liberal-vs-conservative debate, or persecution of someone speaking the orthodox truth.  There are and have been much more conservative voices within the diocese, and many other opportunities that a vindictive bishop could have used to slap down Armstrong had one chosen to do so.  Financial malfeasance within a parish, though, cannot be tolerated (nor can other non-theological crimes, of course).

Note also that this criminal case, by local civil authorities, was completely separate from the civil case (also lost by Armstrong and his parish) over ownership of Grace & St Stephen’s Church.  While the latter could conceivably be considered “persecution” by the diocese (just as any law suit to recover absconded property could be considered “persecution”), the former certainly is not.

So there’s still plenty of confusion about the whole outcome, so far as I can see. There is (or isn’t?) a felony theft conviction (to which the punishment has, perhaps, been “deferred” to the “distant (?) future” — but that can mean, in Colorado, that the charge will be dropped if Armstrong keeps his nose clean in the future).  There is also a misdemeanor conviction for which restitution may have to be made (at some future point).  These were plead to without admitting guilt, but admitting that the state had a case where guilt could have been found (hand-waving away of prosecutor-loving juries notwithstanding). Because there was no admission of guilt, the existing G&StS parish would have a more difficult time suing for restitution.

(More discussion of what an Alford plea might mean in the comments here.)

Note that the current Anglican body Armstrong belongs to, ACNA (Anglican Church in North America), does allow a priest to be defrocked for “A conviction by a court of competent jurisdiction for felony or other serious offenses.”  Not that I expect it to happen, but it will be interesting to read the press release on the subject.  (If the Alford plea allows the charges to be dropped, then arguably the “felony” never happened, in which case nobody will have to do anything about it.)

I’ll keep folks posted if/when I hear anything else.

(I’d crosslink back to various earlier stories on the subject, but there have been so many.  I’ll just point to a search link here.)

(via Stan)