LAWRENCE COUNTY, Pa. — Jordan Brown spent seven years in juvenile detention for the murder of his dad’s pregnant girlfriend, Kenzie Houk, before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously overturned his murder conviction due to insufficient evidence.
Now he’s suing the troopers who put him in jail.
>> Federal civil rights trial begins for officials accused of wrongfully convicting local 11-year-old
Jurors have to decide if state police violated his constitutional rights through malicious prosecution and fabricating evidence. His attorney claimed troopers arrested him less than 24 hours after the murder, without credible evidence and without considering the ex-boyfriend for whom Houk took out a PRF against.
In closing arguments his lawyer said the “11-year-old was arrested at 3:30 am, taken from his home and dropped off at an adult facility.”
Arguing troopers operated in “reckless disregard for Jordan’s rights,” “fabricated evidence” which was his soon to be step-sister’s interview, saying, “but for that evidence he likely would not have been arrested.”
In 2009, Houk was shot in the back of the head in bed, she was nine months pregnant. Houk’s 7-year-old daughter implicated Jordan, saying he killed her before school in her interview with police at 12:30 a.m. Lawyers for Brown argue the two kids were interviewed seven times that day, before she said anything about guns or hearing a “boom.”
If jurors find state police were liable and violated his constitutional rights, this whole process begins again with new testimony in the damages portion of the trial.
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