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By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned 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.
In September 2024, Terence Sutton Jr was sentenced 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.
Hylton-Brown's mother, Karen Hylton, told CNN before the announcement that she was shocked and cried when she learned of the potential pardons.
The incident happened months after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. That murder led to protests against police brutality and racial inequality in the U.S. and around the world.
After taking office on Monday, Trump pardoned about 1,500 of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol four years ago on Jan. 6, 2021. Among those pardoned were some who assaulted police officers.
The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the U.S. that endorsed Trump in the 2024 election, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police said in a joint statement they were "deeply discouraged" by those pardons.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Donna Bryson and Gerry Doyle)
