President Donald Trump issued full and unconditional pardons Wednesday to two Washington, D.C., police officers who were convicted for their roles in a deadly chase of a young man on a moped in 2020 and subsequent cover-up, a case that led to protests in the nation’s capital.
Trump granted clemency to Metropolitan Police Department Officer Terence Sutton, who was sentenced in September to more than five years in prison. He faced a District of Columbia charge of second-degree murder, and federal charges of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice in the October 2020 unauthorized pursuit that killed Karon Hylton-Brown, 20. Sutton was the first D.C. police officer to be convicted of murder for conduct while on duty.
The same jury that found Sutton guilty also convicted Andrew Zabavsky, a lieutenant who supervised Sutton, of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice. Zabavsky was sentenced to four years in prison. He was not accused of the more serious charge of second-degree murder. Trump granted Zabavsky clemency.
Both men had been free pending the outcome of their appeals.
Trump had hinted of his plans to pardon them after his inauguration.
“They were arrested, put in jail for five years because they went after an illegal,” Trump said Tuesday. “And I guess something happened where something went wrong, and they arrested the two officers and put them in jail for going after a criminal.”
Hylton-Brown was an American citizen, his mother, Karen Hylton, said in an interview Thursday night. She said he was born Feb. 29, 2000, in Washington, D.C.
Hylton said she sent a letter to the White House addressed to Trump on Tuesday asking him not to pardon Sutton and Zabavsky. She also wrote in the letter, a copy of which she shared with NBC News, that she believed racism had caused her son’s death, and she asked Trump to review the case before making a judgment. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.
The D.C. Police Union praised Trump’s decision, saying in a statement that Sutton had been “wrongly charged by corrupt prosecutors for doing his job.”
“This action rights an incredible wrong that not only harmed Officer Sutton, but also crippled the ability for the department to function,” the union said.
The union expressed “dismay” a day earlier after Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including those who assaulted law enforcement officers.
The Metropolitan Police Department thanked Trump “for supporting its officers” after the Sutton-Zabavsky pardons, adding in a statement that the prosecutions “were literally unprecedented.”
“Never before, in any other jurisdiction in the country, has a police officer been charged with second-degree murder for pursuing a suspect,” the department said.
On the night of Oct. 23, 2020, months after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis had ignited widespread protests against police brutality and racial injustice, Sutton used a police car to chase Hylton-Brown, who was driving a moped without a helmet on a sidewalk in northwest Washington, prosecutors said.
Hylton-Brown ignored Sutton’s attempt to stop him and drove off. Sutton chased Hylton-Brown for more than 10 blocks “at unreasonable speeds,” prosecutors said, and, at one point, drove the wrong way on a one-way street. Sutton followed Hylton-Brown into a narrow alley, turned off his car’s emergency lights and siren and accelerated. When Hylton-Brown exited the alley, he was struck by another vehicle, according to prosecutors.
“As Mr. Hylton-Brown lay unconscious in the street in a pool of his own blood, Sutton and Zabavsky, agreed to cover up what Sutton had done to prevent any further investigation of the incident,” prosecutors said in a statement in September.
The officers allowed the driver whose car struck Hylton-Brown to leave the scene within 20 minutes of the crash, then turned off their body-worn cameras, conferred privately and left, prosecutors said.
Sutton drove his police car directly over the crash site, audibly crushing pieces of debris from the collision as he left, prosecutors said, and neither officer contacted the department’s Major Crash Unit or its Internal Affairs Division to each initiate investigations.
They also misled their commanding officer about the severity of the crash, denying that a police chase had even occurred and omitting any mention of Hylton-Brown’s critical injuries, prosecutors said. According to prosecutors, Zabavsky also falsely implied that Hylton-Brown had been drunk and Sutton drafted a false police report.
Hylton-Brown suffered severe head trauma and died two days later.
“The jury in this case found the defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for their roles in the murder of Karon Hylton Brown and a related cover up, affirming that what happened here was a serious crime,” then-U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in September after the officers were sentenced. “Public safety requires public trust. Crimes like this erode that trust and are a disservice to the community and the thousands of officers who work incredibly hard, within the bounds of the Constitution, to keep us safe.”
The case spurred days of protests outside a police station in Washington.
David Shurtz, an attorney representing Hylton-Brown’s estate, said Trump’s decision was “outrageous” and “misguided.”
“I think it’s one of the worst decisions Trump has ever made,” he said. “And I believe he is being ill-advised.”
Shurtz believes police unions influenced the decision for the officers to receive pardons.
Zabavsky’s attorney, Christopher Zampogna, said in a statement that his client “thanks President Trump for issuing his pardon unconditionally.” J. Michael Hannon, Sutton’s attorney, did not immediately return a request for comment.
