Pleading guilty Thursday to one count of lying to a grand jury, former V.I. Police Officer Carlton Charleswell now faces up to five years in prison and a possible $250,000 fine.
Charleswell was arrested last September after a federal grand jury handed down a two-count indictment against him alleging that he tried to influence and intimidate a grand juror involved in proceedings relating to a robbery case on St. Thomas in which his daughter was a suspect.
The indictment also alleged that Charleswell attempted to persuade a fellow VIPD officer to falsify evidence relating to the investigation. The indictment was modified as the case continued to play out in District Court, but after months of delayed hearings, Charleswell took a plea deal and appeared Thursday before visiting District Court Judge Juan Sanchez, according to a Thursday news release.
At an arraignment hearing last September, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nolan Paige offered up cell phone records that linked Charleswell’s daughter to Michael Hodge, the suspect eventually convicted of robbing the Subway restaurant in Nisky Center last May.
At the time, Paige said the daughter’s cell phone — which was inside the store at the time of the robbery — and a cell phone later found in Hodge’s truck were both registered to the daughter’s mother.
The details are similar in the plea agreement, saying that Charleswell falsely testified under oath before a grand jury that a VIPD officer involved in the robbery investigation told him the cell phone recovered after the incident was not found in Hodge’s truck, but "somewhere else."
The investigation of this case was conducted by a joint local and federal task force — made up of the VIPD, U.S. Marshals Service, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service — conducting a probe into corruption within the V.I. Police Department.
Along with Charleswell, the probe has led to the convictions of former VIPD Officer Jerome Blyden, VIPD Capt. Enrique Saldana and VIPD Sgt. George Greene Jr.
