Two police officers were sentenced to years in prison on Thursday for fatally chasing a man on a moped and then covering up the incident, which sparked protests in the nation’s capital.
Metropolitan Police Department officer Terrence Sutton, 40, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for murder in the October 2020 death of 20-year-old Caron Hilton-Brown. Former MPD Lt. Andrew Javawski, who supervised Sutton, was sentenced to four years in prison for conspiring with Sutton to cover up a reckless pursuit.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman sentenced both men to prison after a three-day trial. According to a Justice Department spokesperson, the judge allowed the two officers to remain free while their appeals are pending.
Prosecutors recommended sentences of 18 years and just over 10 years for Sutton and Javabski, respectively.
“Public safety requires public trust,” Matthew Graves, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a statement after the ruling.
“Crimes like these erode trust and harm the thousands of police officers who work incredibly hard to keep us safe within the bounds of our communities and our Constitution,” Graves said.
In a prepared statement filed in court, Sutton said he had known Hylton-Brown for years and saw him almost daily.
“Never in my worst nightmares did I think this would end this way,” he wrote. “As a police officer, my intentions have always been pure and genuine: to serve and protect the people who live and work in my community.”
After Hilton-Brown’s death, hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside a police station in Washington.
In December 2022, after a nine-week trial, a jury found Sutton guilty of second-degree murder and the two officers guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
On the night of October 23, 2020, Sutton drove an undercover police vehicle to pursue Hylton-Brown, who was riding an electric moped without a helmet on the sidewalk. Three other officers were in Sutton’s vehicle. Zabavsky was in a marked police vehicle.
The chase lasted nearly three minutes, spanning 10 city blocks, with drivers running stop signs and driving the wrong way down one-way streets. Sutton turned off his vehicle’s emergency lights and siren and accelerated just before the oncoming car struck Hylton-Brown, sending his body flying into the air. He never regained consciousness before his death.
The driver of the vehicle that struck Hylton-Brown testified that he would have slowed down or stopped if he had seen the police lights or heard the sirens. According to prosecutors, the extended pursuit disregarded the risk to public safety and violated the department’s pursuit training and policy.
“Hilton-Browne was not a fugitive, and the evidence at trial gave police no reason to believe he was,” prosecutors wrote. “There was also no evidence that he posed an imminent risk of harm to others, nor was there any evidence that he possessed a weapon.”
Prosecutors say Sutton and Zabavsky immediately set about covering up the accident. They didn’t interview the man and waved off witnesses to the crash. They allowed the driver of the vehicle that struck Hylton-Brown to leave the scene within 20 minutes. Instead of preserving evidence, Sutton drove over the wreckage of the crash. They fooled the commander about the severity of the crash. Sutton later filed a false police report about the incident.
The prosecution wrote, “It is a serious crime for a police officer who caused a fatal accident while on duty to cover up the situation, and it shockingly undermines the public’s trust.”
More than 40 current and former law enforcement officers submitted a letter to the court in support of Sutton, who served on the force for 13 years.
“Officer Sutton did not intend to harm Hilton-Brown that evening,” Sutton’s attorney wrote. “His only motive was to conduct an investigative stop to ensure Hilton-Brown was unarmed and to prevent further violence.”
Javabski’s attorneys asked the judge to sentence the 18-year veteran to probation instead of prison. They said Sutton, 56, was the first MPD officer to be charged with murder and that Javabski’s case was “equally unique.”
“The indictment itself, combined with the media attention surrounding it, should serve as a general deterrent to other officers who may find themselves in a similar situation to Lt. Zabavsky,” the attorneys wrote.
Amala Jones-Bay, the mother of Hilton-Brown’s daughter, described him as a loving father and supportive boyfriend.
“This whole thing came to an early end because of the reckless police officers who illegally pursued and killed my lover,” she wrote in a letter to the court.
