Prison sentence for two DC police officers after fatal chase with scooter rider

A Washington, DC police officer was sentenced to five and a half years in prison on Thursday after being found guilty of the premeditated murder 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 first-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice in connection with the death of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown.

At the sentencing hearing on Thursday, which culminated a fierce legal battle and a parade of character witnesses and victim testimony, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman sentenced Sutton to five and a half years in prison for murder and four years each for conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He will serve those sentences concurrently with his murder sentence.

A second officer, Lt. Andrew Zabavsky, 56, was found guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice and sentenced to a total of four years in prison.

Both officers will remain released from custody pending the outcome of their appeal, the judge decided.

“Police work is a very dangerous business. Decisions have to be made in a split second,” Friedman said before announcing his verdict. But he disputed the notion that the conviction and sentence in this case would mean that some police officers would be afraid of their jobs in the future.

“If you want to send a message to law enforcement, send a message: You cannot do what Officer Sutton did. And you certainly cannot cover it up,” the judge said.

Hylton-Brown's death sparked protests in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2020 in response to the nationwide investigation into police violence following the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Before Thursday's sentencing in U.S. District Court, federal prosecutors sought an 18-year prison sentence for Sutton, arguing that he engaged in a dangerous, unauthorized police chase that ended in the “gruesome and deadly collision” and then conspired with Zabavsky to cover up the fact that he initiated the chase while Hylton-Brown “lay unconscious in a pool of blood on the roadway.”

Attorneys for Sutton, who was twice named Police Officer of the Year and received more than 60 awards during his 13-year career with the department, said the officer knew Hylton-Brown as a member of a violent street gang and had reason to stop him on the night of Oct. 23, 2020.

Defense attorneys denied that the officer was speeding, saying Sutton's vehicle was more than 40 feet behind Hylton-Brown at the time of the crash.

The police protest against the conviction

Some officials have spoken out in support of Sutton, arguing that his conviction and other similar cases could affect officers' ability to do their jobs for fear of legal consequences.

Those officers include Peter Newsham, who was DC police chief at the time of the fatal chase. Newsham left that position in 2021 and now heads the Prince William County Police Department.

“I believe this is the most unfair thing I have ever seen happen to a police officer in my nearly 35-year career in law enforcement,” Newsham said in an emailed statement.

Before the verdict was announced, Sutton's defense attorneys submitted 42 letters from current and former police officers asking for a reduced sentence for Sutton.

Among the letters asking for leniency was one from former DC police officer Michael Fanone, who was attacked by a mob at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In a statement released after the verdict, the Washington DC police union called the convictions against the officers a “serious miscarriage of justice” and blamed “politically motivated prosecutions.”

The statement continued: “Officer Sutton was convicted of murder despite clear evidence that he did not use force but was simply performing his duty and apprehending a fugitive suspect at the direction of an MPD senior officer.”

Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Michael Hannon questioned the decision of prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for DC to even bring the case to trial.

He said they would not only appeal the officers' convictions, but would also seek a meeting with the U.S. Attorney for DC as well as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to “find out if they want to support this case, not so much on behalf of Terence Sutton, but on behalf of police officers across the country,” Hannon said.

How a chase ended fatally

In October 2020, Hylton-Brown rode a rented scooter on the sidewalk without a helmet in the 400 block of Kennedy Street in the Brightwood neighborhood, violating traffic laws.

Sutton and Zabavsky, in separate police cars, tried to get him to stop. When Hylton-Brown drove away, both officers turned on their headlights and pursued him for more than three minutes “through neighborhood streets filled with pedestrians and other vehicles,” at times reaching speeds of 45 mph, driving the wrong way on one-way streets and running seven stop signs, the indictment says.

The chase spanned ten blocks. Hylton-Brown was struck by another driver as he pulled out of an alley in the 700 block of Kennedy Street. He later died in the hospital.

Police in Washington, DC are not allowed to pursue a vehicle if the sole purpose is to stop a motorist.

After the accident, prosecutors say, Sutton had the driver of the crash that hit Hylton-Brown's scooter drive away within 20 minutes and then turned off her body cameras and tried to make up a story to cover up what had happened.

Neither the Internal Affairs Division nor the Major Accident Division were contacted, Sutton compromised the integrity of the accident scene by driving over and crushing debris, and aThe initial police report appeared 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, confirming that what occurred here was a serious crime,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said in a statement. “Public safety requires public trust. Crimes like this undermine that trust and are a disservice to the community and the thousands of police officers who work incredibly hard under the Constitution to keep us safe.”

Amaala Jones-Bey, mother of a four-year-old daughter with Hylton-Brown, described him as a loving father and supportive friend.

“All of this had to end abruptly because of the ruthless police officers who unlawfully chased my lover to his death,” she wrote in a letter to the court.

Outside the courtroom, she thanked the judge for his unbiased opinion throughout the trial and the verdict. However, she said she was indifferent to the length of the sentence.

“I don’t think anything will change over time,” she said.

Hylton-Brown's mother, Karen Hylton, was arrested after the officers' trial. She was accused of screaming, cursing and physically fighting with U.S. Marshals after the verdict was announced.

She was later charged with assault but was acquitted in a four-day trial late last year.

Scott Gelman and John Domen of WTOP and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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