A D.C. police officer was sentenced Thursday to 5 and 1/2 years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of a man who was struck and killed during a police chase in October 2020.
At a trial in late 2022, Officer Terence Sutton, 40, was found guilty of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice in the death of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown.
At a sentencing hearing Thursday that served as the culmination of fierce legal argument and a parade of character witnesses and victim impact statements, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman sentenced Sutton to 5 and 1/2 years in prison for the murder conviction and four years each for the conspiracy and obstruction convictions, which will be served at the same time as he serves the sentence for murder.
A second officer, Lt. Andrew Zabavsky, 56, who was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, was sentenced to a total of four years in prison.
Both officers will remain released from custody pending their appeal, the judge decided.
“Policing is a very dangerous business. Split-second decisions must be made,” Friedman said before handing down his sentence. However, he disputed the idea that the conviction and sentence in this case means that some police officers will be fearful of doing their jobs in the future.
“If you want to send a message to law enforcement, send a message: You can’t do what Officer Sutton did. And you certainly can’t cover it up,” the judge said.
Hylton-Brown’s death sparked protests in D.C. in the fall of 2020, amid the fallout from a nationwide reckoning with police violence after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
Ahead of Thursday’s sentencing in U.S. District Court, federal prosecutors were seeking an 18-year prison term for Sutton, arguing he engaged in a dangerous unauthorized police pursuit that ended with the “gruesome and fatal collision,” and then conspired with Zabavsky to cover up the fact that he had initiated a police chase, while Hylton-Brown “lay unconscious in the street in a pool of his own blood.”
Attorneys for Sutton, who was twice named “officer of the year” and received more than 60 commendations in a 13-year career with the department, said the officer knew Hylton-Brown as a member of a violent street gang and had reason to try to stop him on the night of Oct. 23, 2020.
The defense attorneys disputed that the officer was speeding and said that Sutton’s vehicle was more than 40 feet behind Hylton-Brown at the time of the crash.
Pushback from police on conviction
Some officers have spoken out in support of Sutton, arguing his conviction and other similar cases could negatively impact officers’ ability to do their jobs for fear of legal retribution.
Among those officers is Peter Newsham, who was chief of D.C. police at the time of the deadly police chase. Newsham left that position 2021 and now runs the Prince William County Police Department.
“I think this is the most unjust thing I have ever seen happen to a police officer in my almost 35-year career in policing,” Newsham said in an emailed statement.
Ahead of the sentencing, Sutton’s defense attorneys submitted 42 letters from current and former members of law enforcement calling for leniency for Sutton.
Among the letters asking for leniency was one from former D.C. officer Michael Fanone, who was attacked by a mob at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In a statement released after the sentence was handed down, the D.C. Police Union called the officers’ sentences a “grave miscarriage of justice” and blamed a “politically motivated prosecution.”
The statement went on to say: “Officer Sutton was convicted on charges of murder despite clear evidence that he did not use any force and was merely performing his duty to apprehend a fleeing suspect, at the direction of an MPD management official.”
Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Michael Hannon questioned the decision of prosecutors within the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. to bring the case in the first place.
In addition to appealing the officers’ convictions, he said they would be seeking a meeting with the U.S. Attorney for D.C., as well as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to “find out whether they wish to stand behind this case, not so much on behalf of Terence Sutton, but on behalf of the law enforcement officers all over the country,” Hannon said.
How a police chase turned deadly
In October 2020, Hylton-Brown was riding a rental scooter on the sidewalk without a helmet, in violation of traffic rules, in the 400 block of Kennedy Street in the Brightwood neighborhood.
Sutton and Zabavsky, in separate police cars, tried to get him to stop. When Hylton-Brown kept driving, both officers switched on their lights and pursed him for more than three minutes “through neighborhood streets with pedestrians and other vehicles present,” at times reaching 45 mph, and driving the wrong way on one-way streets and through seven stop signs, according to the indictment.
The chase covered 10 blocks. Hylton-Brown was struck by another driver when he drove out of an alley in the 700 block of Kennedy Street. He later died in a hospital.
D.C. police are not allowed to pursue a vehicle if the only reason is to make a traffic stop.
After the crash, prosecutors said Sutton allowed the driver of the crash that struck Hylton-Brown’s scooter to leave within 20 minutes, then turned off their body cameras and tried to come up with a story to cover up what happened.
Neither the Internal Affairs Division nor the department’s Major Crash Unit were contacted, Sutton compromised the integrity of the crash scene by driving over and crushing debris, and an initial police report seemed to misrepresent several key elements, prosecutors said.
“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,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves in a statement. “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.”
Amaala Jones-Bey, mother of a 4-year-old daughter with Hylton-Brown, described him as a loving father and supportive boyfriend.
“All of this was cut short because of the reckless police officers who unlawfully chased my lover to his death,” she wrote in a letter to the court.
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, she thanked the judge for demonstrating what she called an unbiased opinion throughout the trial and sentencing. But she said she was indifferent about the length of the sentence.
“I don’t think any amount of time is going to change anything,” she said.
Hylton-Brown’s mother, Karen Hylton, was arrested after the officers’ trial, accused of yelling, cursing and physically struggling with U.S. Marshals following the verdict.
She was later charged with assault, but she was acquitted in a four-day trial late last year.
WTOP’s Scott Gelman and John Domen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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