After deliberating for five days, a jury on Wednesday convicted two D.C. police officers in connection with the 2020 death of a young Black man on a moped. Officer Terence Sutton, 38, was found guilty of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct, and obstruction of justice after prosecutors said he’d recklessly and illegally chased 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown in his unmarked police car, causing the youth to crash his scooter into an oncoming vehicle. Sutton’s co-defendant, Lt. Andrew Zabavsky, who was behind the wheel of a second squad car involved in the chase, was not directly charged in Hylton-Brown’s death, but was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. As the verdicts were read aloud on Wednesday, Hylton-Brown’s mother, Karen Hylton, rocketed up from her seat and began roaring at the officers behind the defendants’ table. She was dragged out of the courtroom by deputy U.S. marshals as the judge yelled, “Get her out!” When Sutton was indicted last September, city officials and prosecutors told The Washington Post they couldn’t remember another case when a D.C. police officer was found guilty of—or even charged in—an on-duty murder.
