Lawsuit against officers who investigated 11-year-old in murder case is nearing trial

More than six years after he was acquitted on insufficient evidence, a man accused of fatally shooting his father’s pregnant fiancée as an 11-year-old wants a federal jury to make Pennsylvania State Police pay for the years he spent in the hospital. has spent. juvenile detention.

Jordan Brown’s federal civil rights case is expected to go to trial early next month in Pittsburgh, nearly 16 years after he was first charged in the February 2009 death of Kenzie Marie Houk at their rented ranch in Wampum, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is among a dozen states that have no wrongful conviction damages laws, making a lawsuit Brown’s legal option to seek compensation for claims that four former troopers fabricated reports and fabricated evidence.

Brown, now 27, was convicted in juvenile court of first-degree murder and the murder of an unborn child. He had been released at age 18 before the state Supreme Court overturned his conviction in July 2018.

The four former troopers — one of whom is now deceased — named in the lawsuit played a leading role in the murder investigation, conducting interviews and drafting the probable cause affidavit used to charge Brown. They are being sued on allegations that they violated his federal civil rights by filing charges without probable cause and fabricating evidence. State police spokesman Myles Snyder said the agency, following its policy on pending litigation, would not comment on the lawsuit.

FILE – This undated photo of Jordan Brown shows Jordan Brown. (Jordan Brown via AP, file)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS

The troopers have argued that they did not fabricate or conceal any evidence, nor did they violate Brown’s constitutional rights. They said they had probable cause to arrest him given what they view as his ability and opportunity to commit the crime and that he possessed a 20-gauge shotgun.

Brown is seeking damages for emotional and mental harm, lost wages, legal fees and time spent in custody. His lawyer, Alec Wright, said Brown had spent three or four years in juvenile facilities before he was old enough to understand his predicament.

“At that point, Jordan has two options,” Wright said. “Succumb to the pain of not seeing your family, not celebrating birthdays, not being free, or do your best to get through this situation that your family says has a finite ending. He chose the latter.”

The National Registry of Exonerations says that about 800 civil judgments since 1989 have paid exonerated people about $3.3 billion, or about $325,000 for each year of wrongful incarceration. For Pennsylvania, the registry lists 32 civil awards that were collectively worth $110 million.

Jordan Brown is not among those listed on the National Registry of Exonerations because the registry requires that there be some evidence favorable to the defendant that was not presented at trial. In his case, his juvenile ruling was revoked due to insufficient evidence.

“It’s hard to imagine a more horrific experience than being convicted of a crime you didn’t commit,” said Jeffrey Gutman, a law professor at George Washington University who maintains the exoneration compensation database. “You have lost your freedom, your livelihood, your family ties and possibly your health, often for decades, for something you didn’t do. So society owes people who have had a terrible throw a remedy for it.”

Jordan and his father, Chris Brown, were living with 26-year-old Houk and her two girls, ages 4 and 7, when Houk was shot to death in her bed. Chris Brown had left for work and was eliminated as a suspect.

Police and prosecutors pursued the theory that Jordan Brown, then a fifth-grader and a youth model, used a 20-gauge shotgun to kill Houk in the minutes before he and Houk’s 7-year-old daughter pulled out of their snow-covered driveway to meet each other. to meet. the morning school bus.

The shooting came to light when a crew collecting firewood realized that Houk’s four-year-old daughter was crying at the front door at about 9 a.m. on February 20, 2009. At 3 a.m. the next day, Brown was charged as an adult. although his case was later sent to the juvenile court. In 2012, Brown was sentenced as a delinquent, which in Pennsylvania is the juvenile equivalent of being found guilty.

Houk’s sister, Jennifer Kraner, said she was in juvenile court for proceedings against Brown and believes he did it.

“It’s clear there will never be justice to bring her back,” Kraner said. ‘But it’s not something we feel comfortable with, that it will make him a millionaire. It seems absolutely ridiculous.”

A key piece of evidence for the prosecution came from interviews investigators conducted with the 7-year-old. The girl said, according to the lawsuit, that she saw Jordan Brown with two guns and that “she heard a ‘big bang’ before Jordan came out and they went to the bus.”

Brown argued in the lawsuit that the interviews “contained numerous inconsistencies and contradictions” and were not reliable.

The state Supreme Court released Brown, unanimously saying that investigators found no eyewitnesses, no DNA or fingerprint evidence, and no blood or biological material on the boy’s clothing.

Police investigated Houk’s ex-boyfriend, who had just moved ten miles from her home, but eliminated him as a suspect. Houk had told him that a paternity test had revealed that Houk’s 4-year-old daughter was not his child, and the night before Houk was killed, he confronted Houk’s parents at a bar, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit alleges that the ex-boyfriend made death threats against Houk and several of her family members, although he denied this during the juvenile court hearing.

A 2014 Supreme Court summary of the case said the ex-boyfriend told police in a voluntary interview that he had been in the basement of his parents’ home after 10 p.m. the night before Houk was killed. During Brown’s hearing, he said he left around 9 a.m. the next morning to return a car part to a store.

A test of his hands showed no gunshot residue and there was still snow on his truck that investigators said would not have survived the drive to the home where Houk was killed, according to the court summary.

Brown told police he saw a black pickup truck on the property the morning of the murder, a description matching the ex-boyfriend’s Ford F-150. Wright believes there has been no investigation into the murder since the Supreme Court released his client. Lawrence County District Attorney Joshua Lamancusa did not return a message seeking comment.

When the lawsuit was filed four years ago, Brown told The Associated Press he hoped a favorable verdict would remove any doubts about his innocence.

“You don’t just win a lawsuit about injustice without reason,” he said.

Today, Brown runs a beer distributorship with his father in Western Pennsylvania and has plans to complete his college studies, Wright said.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.