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President Donald Trump has issued pardons to two Washington, D.C. officers involved in the deadly chase of a Black man on a moped.
On Wednesday (January 22), Trump granted clemency to Metropolitan Police Department Officer Terence Sutton and Andrew Zabavsky, his lieutenant supervisor, following the October 2020 unauthorized chase that killed 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown, per NBC News.
Sutton, who was sentenced in September to more than five years in prison, faced a state charge of second-degree murder and federal charges of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice in connection to Hylton-Brown's death. Zabavsky, who was sentenced to four years in prison, was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice.
Trump previously suggested that he would pardon the officers.
“They were arrested, put in jail for five years because they went after an illegal,” Trump said on Tuesday (January 21) ahead of issuing the pardons. “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, an American citizen born in D.C., was driving a moped without a helmet on a sidewalk on October 23, 2020, when Sutton chased him in a police car, according to prosecutors. The 20-year-old declined to stop and continued to drive his moped as Sutton chased him for more than 10 blocks “at unreasonable speeds,” driving the wrong way on a one-way street, prosecutors said. Sutton followed Hylton-Brown into a narrow alleyway, where he turned off the car's emergency lights and siren and accelerated. As Hylton-Brown exited the alley, he was hit by another vehicle.
“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 previously said.
The officers allowed the driver who hit Hylton-Brown to leave the scene just a few minutes after the crash, turned off their body-worn cameras, talked privately, and left, prosecutors said. Sutton drove his police car over pieces of debris from the collision as he left, according to prosecutors.
The officers never contacted the department’s Major Crash Unit or Internal Affairs Division to initiate investigations. Prosecutors further alleged that they lied about details surrounding the incident, denying that a police chase occurred and omitting that Hylton-Brown had suffered critical injuries. Zabavsky also falsely implied that Hylton-Brown had been drunk, according to prosecutors.
Hylton-Brown died from severe head trauma two days after the crash.
“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 at the officers' September sentencing. “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.”
Karen Hylton, the victim's mother, said she sent a letter to the White House urging Trump not to pardon the officers. In the letter, the mother said she believed racism had caused her son's death.
David Shurtz, an attorney representing Hylton-Brown’s estate, said the pardons were “outrageous” and “misguided.”
“I think it’s one of the worst decisions Trump has ever made,” Shurtz said in a statement. “And I believe he is being ill-advised.”
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