The mother of Daniel Hambrick, who was shot and killed by a Nashville, Tennessee, police officer in 2018, repeated her objections Monday at a hearing for former officer Andrew Delke that the plea deal Delke received reducing his sentence was made without any consultation with the family.
Delke waived his right to a parole hearing held Monday, an agreement that was part of his plea deal from last July. After facing charges of first-degree murder over the 2018 shooting, Delke, 28, agreed to a plea deal that avoided a trial and allowed him to plead guilty to manslaughter.
Delke received a three-year sentence, and the plea deal stipulated that he would not seek parole.
Hambrick, a 25-year-old Black man, was shot by Delke while fleeing with a gun, and his mother, Vickie Hambrick, reiterated her complaints about the plea deal she voiced last summer at the Monday hearing.
Vickie Hambrick called the process that led to the plea deal unfair, secretive and racist, saying if roles were reversed and her son had shot a police officer, he never would have been able to receive such a generous plea agreement, from a potential life sentence related to a first-degree murder charge down to a three-year manslaughter sentence.
Delke appeared remotely from jail during the brief initial hearing.
Attorneys on both sides have said Delke will likely serve a year and a half in jail with standard credits.
Delke is serving time in a jail facility run by the Davidson County Sheriff's Office, not in a state prison.
A parole official said during Monday's hearing that the Tennessee Board of Parole will issue the decision in Delke's case.
The Hambrick family has said they did not know about the plea deal until after it was done. Delke was about to face trial for a first-degree murder charge.
At the July plea hearing, Vickie Hambrick sobbed, screamed, cursed and knocked over a courtroom lectern in a scene that briefly delayed the hearing before the judge accepted the plea agreement.
After that July hearing, Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk responded by saying he had been in contact with them for three years and knew Hambrick wanted Delke to be convicted of murder and sentenced to prison for life, and he had to decide what was in the best interest for the state.
Funk called it "significant progress" because it would be the "first night Nashville has had a police officer in jail for shooting a Black man on duty."
The Hambrick family attorney, Joy Kimbrough, said Monday that Vickie Hambrick found out about the parole hearing from someone who is "keeping up with the case." The district attorney contacted the Nashville sheriff to ensure Hambrick would be able to attend the hearing under victim rights protections in the Tennessee Constitution.
"If that was my son, the table was turned, y'all would have gave him life in prison without the parole and without no hearing, and without no bail, or anything. Y'all would throw away the key on a Black man," Vickie Hambrick said at Monday's hearing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
