A Bay Minette pastor who pleaded guilty last month to sexually abusing a child has since been allowed to withdraw that plea, setting the case back on course for a criminal trial that could send him to state prison for years if he is ultimately convicted.
Norman Washington, pastor of Faith Community Full Gospel Church, was arrested in March 2019 on three counts of second-degree sexual abuse and one count of enticing a child. The charges followed a grand jury finding of probable cause that Washington had abused a 12-year-old girl who was living in his home at the time.
Court records reviewed in connection with the case also indicate investigators found evidence that Washington had previously abused two other girls, who were 15 and 17 years old at the time, with one filing alleging he was “motivated by an unnatural sexual desire for underage females.”
A plea bargain that drew notice
Nearly two years after his arrest, Washington entered a guilty plea to one count of second-degree sexual abuse on Feb. 1. A judge sentenced him to one year in the Baldwin County jail, but suspended that sentence in favor of time already served, plus either one additional day in custody or proof that he had become compliant with the state’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, known as SORNA. Washington spent just over five hours in jail before his release.
As part of the plea agreement, he was also placed on two years of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay $710 in fines, fees and court assessments. Unsupervised probation means a defendant reports through a minimal check-in system rather than meeting regularly with a supervising officer, an arrangement courts typically reserve for cases in which they consider the risk to the community to be low.
The disposition stood in sharp contrast to the scope of the original charges. Washington had been facing four separate counts spanning conduct described in court filings involving three alleged victims, two of whom were teenagers at the time of the alleged abuse, and the plea covered only a single count.
Second-degree sexual abuse under Alabama law
Under the Alabama Criminal Code, sexual abuse in the second degree is defined as sexual contact with another person without consent, or with a victim who is incapable of consent because of age, or physical or mental incapacity. It is classified as a Class A misdemeanor, the most serious misdemeanor category in the state, punishable by up to one year in jail and fines reaching into the thousands of dollars.
The enticing charge is a more serious matter. Alabama law makes it a felony to entice a child to enter a vehicle, room, house or other place for immoral purposes, and a conviction on that count alone would expose a defendant to substantially more time behind bars than any single misdemeanor count. Because the case involved multiple counts and multiple alleged victims, the outcome of a trial could look very different from the suspended sentence produced by the plea.
The withdrawal motion
Before completing the SORNA compliance process, Washington moved quickly to reverse course. On Feb. 5, he filed a motion to stay his sentence along with a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, citing what his filings described as newly available exculpatory evidence.
Among the material submitted to the court was a handwritten letter purportedly written by his 17-year-old granddaughter, who had been identified as an alleged victim in one of the underlying cases. The letter was presented as the centerpiece of the claim that evidence had surfaced after the plea that could change the outcome of the case.
Alabama law does allow a defendant to withdraw a plea in limited circumstances. A guilty plea is supposed to be voluntary, knowing and intelligent, and a court may permit withdrawal when justice would not be served by holding the defendant to the plea, particularly when new evidence emerges or when the plea process itself was marred by error. Judges weigh such motions carefully, because a withdrawal sends a case back to the trial docket and forces both sides to prepare for litigation that a plea would have ended.
Washington’s motions also asked the court to hold his sentence in abeyance while the withdrawal request was considered, a routine procedural step designed to prevent a defendant from having to begin serving a sentence that might later be vacated.
What a retrial would mean
With the plea set aside, the case returns to the Baldwin County court system, where a criminal trial would require prosecutors to prove every element of every count beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury. Baldwin County’s circuit court handles felony and serious misdemeanor cases from across the county, and Bay Minette serves as the county seat, housing the courthouse complex where trials and major hearings are held.
Counts not covered by the plea agreement remained unresolved by the bargain, meaning the stakes of a trial extend well beyond the single misdemeanor count Washington had admitted. If a jury convicted him on the felony enticing count, the sentencing exposure would be far greater than the suspended sentence and unsupervised probation he received under the deal.
The decision to withdraw also erases the admissions a guilty plea contains. A plea functions as a formal acknowledgment of guilt, and when it is withdrawn, the state must once again prove its case from the ground up, with the presumption of innocence back in place and every element of every charge contested.
SORNA and what compliance requires
The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, adopted by the Alabama Legislature in 2011, requires people convicted of qualifying offenses to register with local law enforcement, keep their information current, and remain subject to public notification requirements for periods that can stretch from several years to life, depending on the offense. The law consolidated the state’s older registration statutes and aligned them with federal standards.
For someone convicted of a sexual offense, compliance is not a single trip to the sheriff’s office. Registrants must report in person at set intervals, update any change of address or employment, and in many cases provide information about internet identifiers and vehicles. A defendant who becomes compliant early in a sentence can sometimes satisfy a condition like the one written into Washington’s plea far faster than the alternative of an additional day in custody.
The fact that Washington moved to withdraw his plea before completing that process has been a notable feature of the case. Had he finished registration, the suspended sentence would have taken effect on the terms the parties negotiated, closing the criminal case with no jail time beyond the roughly five hours he served.
The church and the community
Faith Community Full Gospel Church operates in Bay Minette, a city of roughly 8,000 people that serves as the seat of Baldwin County government. Cases involving allegations against members of the clergy tend to draw sustained community attention, particularly when children are involved, and the reversal of a plea in a case of this kind keeps those questions open for the duration of new court proceedings.
The outcome also illustrates how the criminal justice system handles plea agreements after they are struck. When a plea is withdrawn, the sentence imposed under it is set aside, and the parties return to the positions they held before the bargain was made. The state keeps its file, the defense renews its challenges, and a judge eventually sets the matter for trial.
No trial date has been announced publicly since the withdrawal was granted. Until one is set, the case remains one of the more closely watched criminal matters in Baldwin County, and its progress through the docket will be tracked as new hearings are scheduled.
How plea withdrawals unfold in practice
Withdrawal motions of this kind typically trigger a separate evidentiary hearing, where the defense presents the newly claimed evidence and the prosecution responds. The court then decides whether the plea can stand, whether it must be withdrawn, or whether the case should proceed in some other fashion. Once the judge ruled in Washington’s favor on the withdrawal request, the earlier disposition lost its force and the file returned to the active criminal docket.
For the alleged victims and their families, a withdrawal restarts a process they had expected to end with the plea. Instead of closure, they now face the prospect of testimony, cross-examination and a verdict, which is why plea agreements are common in cases like this one and why courts treat attempts to undo them as significant events rather than routine paperwork.
The case also highlights the role grand juries play in Baldwin County. An indictment issued by a grand jury establishes probable cause, not guilt, and the standard of proof at trial — proof beyond a reasonable doubt — is far higher. That gap is precisely what a trial is designed to close, and it is the standard that will now govern the outcome.
South Baldwin readers following the case should expect further filings over the coming months as the parties prepare for a new round of litigation. Any future hearings will be posted on the Baldwin County circuit court docket, and the outcome will hinge on how a jury weighs the evidence prosecutors present against the defense’s renewed challenges.