DC Police Officers Convicted In Black Man's Death Rehired After Trump Pardon

The officers were charged with improperly chasing Karon Hylton-Brown and then conspiring to cover up their actions and the severity of his resulting injuries.

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Two Washington, D.C., officers who were convicted in the 2020 death of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown have been reinstated to the city’s police force after being pardoned by President Donald Trump.

The reinstatements of Metropolitan Police Officer Terence Sutton and Lt. Andrew Zabavsky were confirmed by a police spokesperson to HuffPost on Tuesday. The spokesperson declined further comment, reasoning that it’s a personnel matter.

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Both officers were charged with improperly chasing Hylton-Brown in a police vehicle and then conspiring to cover up their actions and the severity of his resulting, fatal injuries. They were pardoned by Trump just days after he took office in January.

This image from a police-worn body camera shows Karon Hylton-Brown, 20, on the ground after a moped chase on Oct. 23, 2020.

via Associated Press

Both will need to go through extensive retraining before their assignments are determined, a police source told CNN.

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Hylton-Brown was riding a moped on a sidewalk without a helmet when he was chased by the two men. Such offenses are considered traffic infractions and are not to be pursued by police, according to the department’s official policy.

Hylton-Brown crashed his scooter into a car while coming out of an alley ahead of the officers’ vehicle on Oct. 23, 2020. He died two days later from his injuries.

Sutton, who was behind the wheel, was convicted of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice in the crash. He was sentenced to 66 months in prison last September.

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Washington Metropolitan Police Department police officers push back demonstrators on Oct. 28, 2020, following the death of Karon Hylton-Brown.

via Associated Press

Zabavsky, who was supervising Sutton at the time of the crash, was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice and was also sentenced in September to 48 months in prison. Both men have been out on bail while appealing their convictions.

Prosecutors said the officers drove at unreasonable speeds and at one point drove in the wrong direction down a one-way street during their pursuit of Hylton-Brown, who was unarmed. After the crash, the officers turned off their body-worn cameras, allowed the driver that struck Hylton-Brown to leave the scene, and discussed how to cover up what had happened as Hylton-Brown lay dying of his injuries in the road.

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Neither officer notified the city’s major crash unit and they submitted a false account of what happened, with Zabavsky falsely suggesting that Hylton-Brown was driving the moped while intoxicated, the Justice Department said.

Sutton’s attorney Kellen Dwyer, in a statement praising Trump’s pardon back in January, had argued that the conviction would have been reversed in the D.C. Circuit because Sutton was acting on a tip that Hylton-Brown was involved in a gang-related altercation. This detail, he said, was kept from the jury.

The D.C. Police Union, reacting to news of their pardons in January, called their convictions “glaring miscarriages of justice.”

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“These officers — men of integrity and dedication — were targeted by corrupt prosecutors who weaponized the legal system against them,” the union said.

Hylton-Brown’s mother, Karen Hylton, had begged Trump in a letter not to pardon both men upon hearing of his consideration.

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“Do not pardon these murderers,” she told CNN back in January. “I’m asking him, do not pardon them.”

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