Hyde Park man gets five years in federal prison on gun charge

A federal judge has sentenced a Hyde Park man to five years in prison for getting caught throwing a backpack with a gun up on a Blue Hill Avenue roof while police were chasing him on May 1, 2019, the US Attorney's office reports.

Kerry Charlotin, 30, pleaded guilty in January to a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition - which arose from a 2018 conviction in West Roxbury Municipal Court on a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon - a gun.

Judge William Young's sentence is less than the almost 6 1/2-year sentence recommended by prosecutors and more than the 4 years proposed by his attorney. He will receive credit for the more than a year he has served in a Rhode Island prison after his arrest on the federal charge and through his sentencing.

Charlotin's attorney urged Young to take into account the fact that Charlotin grew up in a series of broken homes, starting with a mother who made money by performing voodoo. After a series of foster homes, she continued, Charlotin was given to his father, who often beat him with a belt, and his stepmother. He suffers from bipolar disorder and needs mental-health care, not a long prison term, she wrote, adding that while in detention at a Rhode Island prison awaiting sentencing, he earned his GED and trained as a barber.

A prosecutor, however, wrote that past lenient sentences - he was on parole for the West Roxbury conviction when arrested on Blue Hill Avenue - show that shorter sentences have not helped end his criminal life, which includes various robberies and a threat to shoot up a cab. Although some of his behavior might be due to his mental illness and substance abuse, others have resulted from clear decisions he made to commit acts of violence or potential violence. A long sentence would make him pay for his crime and serve as a warning to others not to do what he did, the prosecutor wrote.