Member-only story
The Inevitable Pardon of George Floyd’s Killers
Predicting the Pardons of Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane
Donald Trump announced on January 22, 2025, that former MPD officers Andrew Zabavsky and Terence Sutton would receive full and unconditional pardons. Sutton was found guilty of second-degree murder, and both he and Zabavsky were found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction.
On Oct. 23, 2020, then-Lietuenant Zabavsky and Officer Sutton said they saw Karon Hylton-Brown operating an electric moped without a helmet on the sidewalk in the Brightwood Park area of Northwest D.C.
The officers attempted to make a traffic stop. Prosecutors say a pursuit began and continued on neighborhood streets for more than 10 blocks at “unreasonable speeds,” at one point going the wrong way up a one-way street. In the final moments of the pursuit, Sutton, who was driving, followed Hylton-Brown into a narrow alley off the 700 block of Kennedy Street, NW, turned off his car’s emergency lights and siren, and accelerated behind the moped. When he left the alley and turned onto Kennedy Street, Hylton-Brown was hit by an oncoming car. He suffered severe head trauma and died on Oct. 25, 2020. As Hylton-Brown lay dying in the street in a pool of his own blood, Sutton and Zabavsky agreed to cover up the…