A former Nashville police officer who pleaded guilty to manslaughter will not leave jail early, for now

A former Nashville police officer who pleaded guilty to manslaughter last summer has turned down his first chance at early release.

Andrew Delke was scheduled to have a parole hearing Monday morning. Instead, he told officials he would waive his right to parole and stay behind bars to keep serving his three-year sentence.

Delke’s defense attorney, David Raybin, says the former officer agreed to forego parole as part of the plea agreement.

Delke was supposed to stand trial for first-degree murder this past summer, for shooting Daniel Hambrick during a 2018 foot chase. Hambrick was Black and Delke is white. If he had been convicted, he could have spent the rest of his life in prison.

More: Learn more about the case in WPLN’s podcast, Deadly Force.

But just days before jury selection was supposed to start, Delke resigned from the police department and signed a plea deal. He agreed to serve a three-year sentence at the local jail.

The parole hearing was a mere formality, required by law, and Delke had indicated to the board in advance that he did not want to be considered for it.

But even without being granted parole, Delke could still leave jail early.

The rules at the jail allow people who behave well to get time off their sentence. The Davidson County Sheriff’s Office uses a formula that takes a certain number of days off a sentence for each day served without an infraction.

State-run prisons in Tennessee also give credit for good behavior to shorten people’s sentences. However, Raybin says DCSO gives more time off than state facilities.

That means Delke could go home after about a year and a half in jail.

“I haven’t put a pencil to it,” Raybin says. “But it’ll be toward the end of this year.”

Hambrick’s family expresses disappointment

At Monday’s meeting with the parole board, Daniel Hambrick’s mother expressed frustration that the man who killed her son could go home after such a short stint behind bars.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Vickie Hambrick said. “Not at all.”

The family’s attorney, Joy Kimbrough, said Hambrick was also upset that she had not been kept in the loop about developments in the case, including the parole hearing. Kimbrough said someone who had been following the case notified her — not an official.

The Hambrick family was also left in the dark when prosecutors offered Delke a plea deal in July. The district attorney did not inform them until after the defense team had agreed to the terms.

The deal bumped down Delke’s charge from first-degree murder, the most serious type of homicide in the state of Tennessee, to voluntary manslaughter. Prosecutors also agreed to let him serve the minimum possible sentence.

Delke shot Hambrick in the back in 2018 while he ran away with a gun in his hand. The former officer told state investigators that he pulled the trigger because he was afraid that Hambrick was going to shoot him. He also said that Hambrick had pointed a gun in his direction.

Surveillance footage that captured the shooting, as well as the moments leading up to it, never show Hambrick’s gun aimed at Delke. Video of about two seconds of the chase were never recovered.

Delke is the first Nashville police officer to serve time for shooting someone in the line of duty. Law enforcement officials are rarely charged for on-duty shootings, because they are allowed to shoot in self-defense if they believe their life or someone else’s is in danger.

Nashville officers shot 10 people last year — seven fatally — and two young men also killed themselves during encounters with officers. Criminal charges have not been filed in any of those cases.

District Attorney Glenn Funk told reporters at the time of Delke’s plea deal that he offered the agreement because it was not a “slam dunk case,” and he worried the trial could have ended in a hung jury or an acquittal, with no time served at all.

Courtesy Tennessean Via Pool

Vickie Hambrick was overcome with emotion last July as Andrew Delke pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the 2018 killing of her son, Daniel.

Hambrick broke down in sobs in the courtroom on the day of plea hearing, after her attorney urged the judge not to accept the deal. Delke was temporarily escorted out of the courtroom while Hambrick cried and cursed.

“I hate you!” she screamed at the former officer and rejected an apology he had made on the stand moments earlier.

Hambrick cursed him again at Monday’s meeting. Had her son killed Delke, she said, he would have been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

“Y’all would have thrown away the key on a Black man,” she said.