Two days before his term ended, former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), citing new evidence, pardoned the former Fairfax County police sergeant who was convicted in connection with the fatal shooting of an unarmed man.
Youngkin had previously granted clemency to the sergeant, Wesley G. Shifflett, vacating the sentence imposed in the conviction on the charge of reckless discharge of a firearm.
On Feb. 22, 2023, Shifflett had pursued and shot a man thought to have stolen sunglasses at Tysons Corner Center.
News of the pardon, previously reported by the Associated Press, comes at a time of intense debate throughout the country over grounds for law enforcement’s use of deadly force. The debate was touched off by two recent fatal shootings by federal personnel in Minneapolis.
In issuing the pardon Jan. 15 before his term ended this month, Youngkin said he had learned that an independent body concluded it was “objectively reasonable” for Shifflett to have considered himself in danger of death or serious injury.
Fairfax County’s Office of the Independent Police Auditor made that determination on April 7, Youngkin wrote, too late for Shifflett to use at his trial.
A commutation of sentence allows a conviction to stand. In issuing a pardon, the then-governor overturned the conviction.
In going beyond commutation, Youngkin said the new information meant that the deadly force used by Shifflett “was both lawful and consistent with” police policy and training.
It was “in the interest of justice” in such instances for law enforcement officers to be free from punishment by either the courts or state officials.
Shifflett was discharged from the police force after the shooting; it was not clear whether a pardon means he could be reinstated.
A jury convicted Shifflett in October 2024 of reckless handling of a firearm, but acquitted him of a more serious involuntary manslaughter charge in the encounter in which he chased and shot Timothy McCree Johnson, 37, outside Tysons Corner Center.
Shifflett was sentenced last February to three years in prison, but spent just two nights in jail before going free, his attorney Caleb Kershner told The Washington Post last year.
In his commutation last year of the three-year sentence, the governor wrote that it went beyond the state’s sentencing guidelines.
The post Days before his term’s end, Youngkin pardoned Fairfax officer appeared first on Washington Post.
