Lawsuit against troopers who investigated 11-year-old in murder case nears trial

More than six years after he was exonerated based on insufficient evidence, a man who was charged as an 11-year-old with shooting his father's pregnant fiancee to death wants a federal jury to make the Pennsylvania State Police pay for the years he spent in juvenile detention.

Jordan Brown's federal civil rights case is expected to get underway in Pittsburgh early next month, nearly 16 years after he was first accused of the February 2009 death of Kenzie Marie Houk inside their rented farmhouse 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 former troopers fabricated reports and manufactured evidence.

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

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

The troopers have argued they did not fabricate or conceal any evidence, nor did they violate Brown’s constitutional rights. They've said they had probable cause to arrest him, given what they see 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 costs and the time he spent in custody. His attorney, Alec Wright, said Brown had been in juvenile facilities for three or four years before he was old enough to comprehend 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 end. He chose the latter.”

The National Registry of Exonerations says about 800 civil awards since 1989 to exonerees have amounted to about $3.3 billion, or roughly $325,000 for each year of wrongful incarceration. For Pennsylvania, the registry lists 32 civil awards that were worth a collective $110 million.

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

“It's hard to imagine a more horrifying experience than having been 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 liberty, your livelihood, your family connections, potentially your health, often for decades, for 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 the 26-year-old Houk and her two girls, aged 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 a theory that Jordan Brown, then a fifth-grader, used a youth model, 20-gauge shotgun to kill Houk in the minutes before he and Houk's 7-year-old daughter went down their snow-covered driveway to meet the morning school bus.

The shooting came to light when a crew picking up firewood realized Houk's 4-year-old daughter was crying at the front door at about 9 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2009. By 3 a.m. the next day 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 to being found guilty.

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

“Obviously, there’s never justice, to bring her back,” Kraner said. “But it’s not something we’re comfortable with, him becoming a millionaire upon it. It seems absolutely ludicrous.”

A key piece of prosecution evidence 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 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 freed Brown, saying in a unanimous opinion that investigators produced 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 him a paternity test showed that Houk's 4-year-old daughter was not his child, and the night before Houk was killed, he had confronted Houk's parents at a bar, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges the ex-boyfriend had 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 had been 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 at about 9 a.m. to return an auto 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 house 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 killing, a description that matched the ex-boyfriend's Ford F-150. Wright believes no investigation into the killing has occurred 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 he hoped a favorable verdict might dispel any lingering doubts about his innocence.

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

These days Brown is running a western Pennsylvania beer distributorship with his father and has plans to finish his college degree, Wright said.