Lawsuit against cops who investigated 11-year-old in killing of father’s pregnant fiance nears trial

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — More than six years after he was exonerated based on insufficient evidence, an 11-year-old man accused of shooting his father’s pregnant fiancee wants a federal jury to charge police of Pennsylvania to pay for years spent in juvenile detention.

Jordan Brown’s federal civil rights case is expected to begin in Pittsburgh early next month, 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 about a dozen states that do not have wrongful conviction compensation laws, leaving a lawsuit as Brown’s legal option to seek compensation for claims that four ex-servicemen fabricated reports and fabricated evidence.

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

The four former soldiers — one now deceased — who were named in the lawsuit played leading roles in the murder investigation, conducting interviews and drafting the probable cause affidavit used to indict Brown. They are being sued on charges that they violated his federal civil rights by filing charges that lacked probable cause and fabricating evidence. State police spokesman Myles Snyder said the agency, following policy on pending litigation, would not comment on the lawsuit.

The troopers argued they did not fabricate or conceal any evidence or violate Brown’s constitutional rights. They said they have probable cause to arrest him given what they see as his ability and opportunity to commit the crime and that he was in possession of a .20-gauge shotgun.

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

“At that point, Jordan has two options,” Wright said. “Give in 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 end. He chose the latter”.

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

Jordan Brown is not listed on the National Exoneration Registry because the registry requires that there be some evidence favorable to the defendant that was not presented at trial. In his case, his juvenile adjudication was overturned for lack of evidence.

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

Jordan and his father, Chris Brown, were living with Houk, 26, and her two daughters, ages 4 and 7, when Houk was fatally shot in her bed. Chris Brown had left for work and was eliminated as a suspect.

Police and prosecutors pursued a theory that Jordan Brown, then a fifth-grader, used a youth-model, .20-gauge shotgun to kill Houk minutes before he and Houk’s 10-year-old daughter 7 years old, to walk down their snow-covered driveway to meet. the morning school bus.

The shooting came to light when a crew picking up firewood noticed Houk’s 4-year-old daughter crying at the front door around 9 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2009. By 3 a.m. the next morning, Brown had been charged as an adult, although his case was later sent to juvenile court. In 2012, Brown was adjudicated delinquent, which in Pennsylvania is the juvenile equivalent of being found guilty.

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

“Obviously, there’s never any justice to bring it back,” Kraner said. “But it’s not something we’re comfortable with, him becoming a millionaire in that regard. It seems absolutely ridiculous.”

A key piece of evidence for the prosecution came from interviews investigators had 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 boom’ before Jordan got out and left for the bus.”

Brown claimed in the lawsuit that the interviews “contain numerous inconsistencies and contradictions” and are unreliable.

The state Supreme Court freed Brown, saying in a unanimous opinion that investigators presented 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 10 miles (16 kilometers) from her home, but eliminated him as a suspect. Houk had told her that a paternity test showed 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, according to the lawsuit.

The suit claims the ex-boyfriend made death threats against Houk and several of her relatives, although he denied doing so in testimony at Brown’s juvenile court hearing.

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

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 she saw a black pickup truck on the property the morning of the crime, a description that matched the ex-boyfriend’s Ford F-150. Wright believes there has been no investigation into the crime since the state Supreme Court freed 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 that he hoped a favorable verdict could dispel any lingering doubts about his innocence.

“You don’t win a lawsuit for injustice for no reason,” he said.

These days, Brown runs a beer distributorship in western Pennsylvania with his father and plans to finish college, Wright said.