WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Republican U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned, opens new tab two police officers in Washington who were convicted in the 2020 murder of a 20-year-old Black man named Karon Hylton-Brown, the White House said, opens new tab.
In September 2024, Terence Sutton Jr was sentenced, opens new tab to 66 months in prison while Andrew Zabavsky was sentenced to 48 months in prison over “an unauthorized police pursuit that ended in a collision on Oct. 23, 2020, that caused the death of Karon Hylton-Brown, 20, in Northwest Washington D.C.,” the Justice Department said last year. The officers remained free pending the outcomes of their appeals.
The Metropolitan Police Department said Sutton, in his early 40s, and Zabavsky, in his mid-50s, were on “indefinite suspension without pay, pending our administration process.”
Sutton was found guilty by a unanimous federal jury in late 2022, after a nine-week trial, of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct, and obstruction of justice. The same jury found Zabavsky guilty of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice.
The jury had found that Sutton caused Hylton-Brown’s death by driving a police vehicle in “conscious disregard” for an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury to Hylton-Brown.
It also found that Sutton and Zabavsky conspired to hide from officials the circumstances of the traffic crash leading to Hylton-Brown’s death.
The DC Police Union had sought a pardon for the two officers.
Sutton’s attorney, Kellen Dwyer, said in a statement cited by CNN that while he and his client were “confident that the D.C. Circuit would have reversed this conviction, we are thrilled that President Trump ended this prosecution once and for all.” Zabavsky’s attorney, Christopher Zampogna, also thanked Trump.
