Ex-Florida quarterback Jalen Kitna agreed to a plea deal Wednesday in Gainesville, Fla., that resulted in the dismissal of five felony child pornography charges connected to his arrest in November.
Kitna pleaded no contest to two counts of disorderly conduct, both of which are second-degree misdemeanors. He was sentenced to one year of probation by Eighth Judicial Circuit Judge Susan Miller-Jones, but he will not face any jail time and will not be registered as a sex offender.
“I want to start off by apologizing to my family, my friends and those that care about me,” Kitna, the son of former NFL quarterback Jon Kitna, said in court Wednesday. “Their support through this whole ordeal has meant a lot to me. The hardest thing about this whole process has been seeing how it’s affected them.
“The valuable lessons that I’ve learned through this whole deal have been very helpful. I’m looking forward to applying those things and moving forward.”
Kitna was arrested on Nov. 30 by the Gainesville Police Department following a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a user on a Discord account believed to belong to Kitna was distributing child sexual abuse material through the online chat platform. He was charged with two counts of distribution of child exploitation material and three counts of possession of child pornography.
Kitna, who had signed with Florida in 2021 and played in just four games during his redshirt freshman season with the Gators in ’22, was kicked off the team shortly after his arrest. He was also banned from Florida’s campus through November ’25, according to ESPN.
“What we’ve got here today is a result that’s fair, and the right result,” Kitna’s attorney, Ron Kozlowski, said following the verdict, according to the Orlando Sentinel. “Obviously, the state agrees, and we feel good about that. This is going give Jalen an opportunity to move on to the next step, whatever that is.”
