Jordan Brown, jailed at 11, sues over ‘stolen’ childhood
How much is a childhood worth? Jordan Brown and his lawyers are about to find out.
Charged at age 11 with the shotgun slaying of his father’s pregnant fiancee, an adjudicated delinquent of first-degree murder, Mr. Brown spent nine years incarcerated until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed his conviction in 2018, citing a lack of concrete evidence linking him to Kenzie Houk’s death.
On Wednesday, Mr. Brown, 22, filed a federal lawsuit against a former Pennsylvania State Police commissioner and four former troopers involved in his case, claiming they violated his constitutional rights, concocted a “false narrative” and focused their investigation on him despite evidence pointing to a different person as the likely killer.
Alec Wright, one of Mr. Brown’s lawyers, described his client’s past decade as a “stolen” childhood.
“This is Jordan’s only opportunity to be compensated for his being wrongfully convicted for the
entirety of his childhood,” Mr. Wright said. “Jordan’s perspective in this lawsuit is it’s the last step for him — and the most significant step for him — for accomplishing for himself and nobody else the vindication of his rights and the proof of his innocence.”
As with lawsuits of this nature, the damages sought will be up to a jury if Mr. Brown wins his case. Mr. Wright said his client is hoping only for reimbursement of the gas money his father, Chris, spent on daily 230mile round-trip car rides to whatever facility was holding his son.
But Mr. Wright, of the O’Brien Law firm in Pittsburgh, recognizes if he prevails on the four-count suit alleging violations of the Fourth and 14th amendments, a jury will have to grapple with valuing a child’s lost years. He called it a “million-dollar question.”
“How do you put a value on, for most of us, the only opportunity we get to be truly free, to find ourselves, to not have the stressors of adulthood, the ability to play in the dirt and get muddy and get food on your clothes and nobody cares, to make mistakes?” Mr. Wright said. “How do you compensate the loss of that? When a false narrative was created about a criminal situation that everybody knew was false? That’s up to a jury.”
State police declined comment. The defendants — former troopers Janice Wilson, Jeffrey Martin, Robert McGraw and Troy Steinhauser and Frank Pawlowski, the state police commissioner from 2008 to 2010 — could not be reached. The lawsuit in U.S. District Court is filed against them as individuals.
Debbie Houk, the victim’s mother, said she was infuriated upon learning of the lawsuit, which she described as a money grab.
“It’s just sickening to think that he should sue the police now. They did their job to the best of their ability,” said Ms. Houk, 66, of New Castle. “I think that’s awful; that makes me sick.”
She said she and her husband, Jack, are “200% sure” Mr. Brown killed their daughter.
Kenzie Houk was 26 and pregnant on Feb. 20, 2009, when authorities said she was shot in the back of her neck as she slept in the farmhouse near New Castle she shared with Mr. Brown, his father and her two young daughters.
Early the next day, state police arrested Mr. Brown, who was a fifth grader at the time. Investigators cited evidence that included gunshot residue on his clothing and statements from Ms. Houk’s 7-year-old daughter, Jenessa.
Mr. Brown’s lawyers, who include Steven M. Barth & Associates, claim investigators ignored the most obvious suspect — someone they said had been abusive toward Ms. Houk and her family — and focused immediately on Mr. Brown with what Mr. Wright called “tunnel vision.”
“They fabricated reports and manufactured evidence against him, culminating in a falsified criminal narrative that stole his entire childhood,” the lawsuit said.
“Ultimately, the PSP Defendants targeted Jordan, who they knew was innocent,” the suit alleges. “No reliable evidence was ever found linking Jordan to Kenzie Houk’s murder, and any evidence that was used against him was fabricated by the PSP Defendants.”
Mr. Brown claims the state police investigators’ “fabricated criminal narrative” attributed to an 11year-old an elaborate series of events to include loading a shotgun, killing Ms. Houk, wiping down the gun and cleaning up evidence — all in less than two minutes. Then he went to school.
Investigators “knew that not a single fact from their criminal narrative really occurred, and they intentionally fabricated each of those facts,” the lawsuit claims.
Not only did state police skew their investigation to build a case against Mr. Brown, the lawsuit claims, the investigating troopers were part of a broader unconstitutional system under then-Commissioner Pawlowski designed to hide evidence that might clear a suspect.
The “callousness” of the troopers and a “flawed system” were at work, Mr. Wright said, “and when those two things converge, what you have is the case of Jordan Brown.”
Asked why state police would go to great lengths to target Mr. Brown, Mr. Wright said he did not know. “The only people who know the answers to that question are the four individuals sued in this lawsuit,” Mr. Wright said. “They’re the only ones who hold the key to this information.”
When the state Supreme Court cleared Mr. Brown almost two years ago, it reversed a lower court’s opinion and determined evidence in the case pointing to Mr. Brown could just as easily have implicated an unknown assailant and, as a result, was insufficient to find him culpable beyond a reasonable doubt.
There was no DNA or fingerprint evidence linking Mr. Brown to the murder, the Supreme Court said. The court found the evidence did not prove a shotgun retrieved from the home was the murder weapon, much less that Mr. Brown pulled the trigger.
The lawsuit claims state police violated internal protocols for interviewing child witnesses in order to guide and influence Ms. Houk’s young children into making incriminating statements about Mr. Brown. At the same time, according to the lawsuit, the investigators dismissed the contents of various initial interviews with Mr. Brown and Ms. Houk’s daughter the lawyers claimed would have helped clear their client.
Two years after leaving incarceration and returning to freedom, Mr. Brown is now back in court, but of his own choosing this time. He is now a college student studying computer science and criminal justice in Ohio. Mr. Wright said his client hopes to be a civil rights lawyer.
“He’s remarkable,” Mr. Wright said. “His ability to overcome adversity that’s been thrown at him in life is astonishing. He’s insightful; he’s intellectual; he’s introspective. I think he’s come to terms with what’s happened to him. He didn’t realize the gravity of what was happening to him until he was incarcerated for three to five years.”
Jonathan D. Silver: jsilver@post-gazette.com.