President Donald Trump granted total and unconditional grace to two Washington police officers on Wednesday, DC, who were found guilty for their role in the murderous pursuit of a young man with mopeds in 2020 and the concealment that followed, a case which led to demonstrations in the country. the national capital.
Trump granted his grace to the Metropolitan Police officer Terence Sutton, who was sentenced to more than five years in prison in September. He faced an accusation of second -degree murder in the Columbia district and federal accusations of conspiracy for obstacles and junction in justice during the unauthorized pursuit of October 2020 which killed Karon Hylton-Brown, 20 years old. Sutton was the first DC police officer to be found guilty of murder for conducting in the exercise of his duties.
The same jury which declared Sutton culpable also found guilty Andrew Zabavsky, a lieutenant who supervised Sutton, a conspiracy with a view to hindrance and obstacle to justice. Zabavsky was sentenced to four years in prison. He was not accused of the more serious accusation of second degree murder. Trump granted grace to Zabavsky.
The two men were free while waiting for the outcome of their appeal.
Trump had referred to him to grant them a grace after his inauguration.
“They were arrested and imprisoned for five years because they were attacking an illegal,” Trump said on Tuesday. “And I guess something happened, something went wrong, and they stopped the two police officers and put them in prison for prosecuting a criminal.”
Hylton-Brown was an American citizen, said David Shurtz, a lawyer representing his succession.
The DC police union welcomed Trump’s decision, saying in a statement that Sutton had been “wrongly charged by corrupt prosecutors for doing his job.”
“This action corrects an incredible harm that not only had the Sutton agent, but also paralyzed the department’s ability to operate,” said the union.
The union expressed its “dismay” one day earlier after Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people charged with the attack of January 6, 2021 against the American Capitol, including those which attacked agents of the forces of the ‘order.
The Metropolitan Police Department thanked Trump “for having supported his agents” after the Sutton-Zabavsky graces, adding in a statement that the prosecution “were literally unprecedented”.
“Never before, in any other jurisdiction in the country, a police officer has been accused of second degree murder for prosecuting a suspect,” said the ministry.
During the night of October 23, 2020, months after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis sparked vast demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice, Sutton used a police car to prosecute Hylton-Brown, which led a moped without a helmet. On a sidewalk northwest of Washington, prosecutors said.
Hylton-Brown ignored Sutton’s attempt to stop him and left. Sutton continued Hylton-Brown on more than 10 houses of houses “at unreasonable speeds”, said the prosecutors, and, at some point, led against the one-way street. Sutton followed Hylton-Brown in a narrow alley, turned off the emergency fires and the siren of his car and accelerated. When Hylton-Brown came out of the alley, he was hit by another vehicle, according to the prosecutors.
“While Mr. Hylton-Brown was losing unconscious in the street in a pond of his own blood, Sutton and Zabavsky agreed to hide what Sutton had done to prevent any more in-depth investigation on the incident,” said prosecutors in prosecutors A press release in September.
The police authorized the driver whose car struck Hylton-Brown to leave the premises within 20 minutes of the accident, then extinguished their body cameras, maintained in private and left, the prosecutors said.
Sutton led his police car directly above the place of the accident, overwhelmingly crushing the debris of the collision when he left, the prosecutors said, and none of the two agents contacted the unit Major accidents from the department or its internal affairs division to open an investigation.
They also misleaded their commander on the severity of the accident, denying that a police pursuit took place and omitting any mention of the serious injuries of Hylton-Brown, prosecutors said. According to prosecutors, Zabavsky also wronged that Hylton-Brown had been drunk and Sutton wrote a false police report.
Hylton-Brown underwent a serious head trauma and died two days later.
“The jury in this case declared the guilty accused beyond reasonable doubt for their role in the murder of Karon Hylton Brown and the related concealment, saying that what happened here was a serious crime,” said the prosecutor American at the time, Matthew M. Graves. In September after the condemnation of the police. “Public security requires public confidence. Crimes like this error this confidence and do not serve the community and the thousands of officers who work incredibly hard, within the limits of the Constitution, to ensure our security.
The case sparked days of demonstrations in front of a Washington police station.
Shurtz, the lawyer representing the relatives of Hylton-Brown, said that Trump’s decision was “scandalous” and “patient”.
“I think this is one of the worst decisions that Trump has ever made,” he said. “And I think he is poorly advised.”
Shurtz thinks that police unions have influenced the police ‘decision to obtain grace.
Zabavsky’s lawyer Christopher Zampogna said in a statement that his client “thanks President Trump for granting his unconditional pardon”. J. Michael Hannon, Sutton’s lawyer, did not immediately respond to a comment request.