President Trump pardoned Wednesday two Metropolitan Police officers who the D.C. Police Union said were wrongly tried and convicted in a 2020 pursuit that ended with a deadly crash.
Mr. Trump granted unconditional pardons to Officer Terrence Sutton and Lieutenant Andrew Zabavsky over their pursuit of scooter driver Karon Hylton-Brown that turned fatal when the 20-year-old crashed near an alley in Northwest.
The officers were chasing Hylton-Brown because he fled from an attempted traffic stop. D.C. police officers are not allowed to pursue people over traffic violations.
Sutton, 40, was sentenced to more than five years in prison last fall after being found guilty of second-degree murder in 2022. The same jury found Zabavsky guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, and he was given a four-year-sentence for the crimes.
The pardon comes two days after Mr. Trump hinted at the possibility while he signed executive orders in the Oval Office following his inauguration.
“We are looking at two police officers, actually, Washington police officers, that went after an illegal and things happened and they ended up putting them in jail,” Mr. Trump said Monday. “They got five-year jail sentences. You know the case, and we’re looking at that in order to give them … we gotta give them a break.”
Mr. Trump, a Republican, has issued a flurry of pardons in the short time he’s been in the White House. The bulk of those pardons — more than 1,500 — were directed toward people convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Wednesday’s pardon for Sutton and Zabavsky followed a public plea from the D.C. Police Union for the president to correct “two glaring miscarriages of justice.”
“These officers — men of integrity and dedication — were targeted by corrupt prosecutors who weaponized the legal system against them,” the D.C. Police Union said in a statement Tuesday.
Both officers were out of prison as they appealed the September sentencing decision.
In October 2020, court records said Sutton was patrolling in the Brightwood neighborhood in Northwest when he saw Hylton-Brown driving a moped on a sidewalk without a helmet.
Prosecutors said Hylton-Brown, 20, ignored Sutton’s attempts to make the late-night traffic stop, prompting the MPD officer to follow the motorist for more than 10 blocks at “unreasonable speeds” and even going the wrong way up a one-way street.
Court records said Sutton followed Hylton-Brown into an alley and turned off his emergency lights and sirens before accelerating toward the scooter driver.
Hylton-Brown drove out of the alley and was struck by an uninvolved driver, prosecutors said. He died in a hospital two days later.
D.C. police officers are not allowed to pursue people over traffic violations.
“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 when announcing the sentences for the two officers in September.
Prosecutors said neither MPD officer preserved the crash scene and allowed the driver to leave the area after 20 minutes.
Sutton and Zabavsky turned off their body cameras to discuss the incident privately, prosecutors said, and also lied to their commanding officer about their roles in the pursuit and the severity of Hylton-Brown’s injuries.
Court records said Sutton crafted a phony narrative in his police report to say no officers chased Hylton-Brown.
Hylton-Brown’s death set off protests in the District, piggybacking on the national angst against police stemming from George Floyd’s in-custody murder earlier in 2020.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.