Lynn Man Charlie Vick Convicted of Attempted Witness Tampering: Messaged Witness From Custody Urging Him Not to Testify and Offered to Pay Him to Stay Away
Boston – Charlie Vick, 37, of Lynn, Massachusetts, has been convicted following a five-day jury trial of one count of attempted witness tampering, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts announced on October 26. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled. Vick was indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2024 on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one count of witness tampering; the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on the felon-in-possession count, resulting in a hung jury on that count.
The case began in April 2023, when Vick was indicted for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon after police allegedly found a firearm in a car he had been driving in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. His trial was scheduled for January 2024 in U.S. District Court in Worcester, and the government planned to call a material witness, identified in court proceedings as Person 1, to testify.
According to the Justice Department, while Vick was at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility awaiting trial, he repeatedly messaged Person 1 urging him not to testify. On November 12, 2023, he asked whether Person 1 was going to work with the government at trial; two days later he wrote that prosecutors needed the witness to testify that the gun found in the car was the gun from a picture, and that without that testimony they had no case. He also wrote that the witness needed to be somewhere away during the trial week and pleaded with him not to testify. On December 28, 2023, he offered to pay the witness to stay away and told him to pack a bag and stay with another person for two days.
The charge of attempted witness tampering provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000, with the actual sentence imposed by a federal district court judge based on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and governing statutes. United States Attorney Leah B. Foley and Thomas A. Greco, Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Boston Field Division, announced the verdict. The Massachusetts State Police provided assistance, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brendan O'Shea and Zachary Stendig of the office's Worcester Branch Office are prosecuting the case.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于马萨诸塞州 Worcester 的 Harold D. Donohue 联邦大楼与联邦法院，本案原定在此开审、检方由联邦检察官办公室 Worcester 分部起诉（资料图）。图片：Kenneth C. Zirkel，CC BY-SA 4.0（Wikimedia Commons）。Photo: The Harold D. Donohue Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the case was set for trial and is prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office Worcester Branch (file photo). Image: Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons).
