Pennsylvania Considers Life in Prison for 11-Year-Old Accused of Murder

Thursday, January 27, 2011
Jordan Brown and Kenzie Houk
Juvenile Jordan Brown is set to be tried as an adult by a Pennsylvania court for allegedly murdering his father’s 8½-month pregnant fiancée when he was 11 years old.
 
The criminal case has garnered attention from child advocates in the U.S. and overseas who object to treating Brown as an adult. If convicted, the now 13-year-old would receive life in prison without possibility of parole, making him the youngest child in American history to receive such a sentence.
 
Brown is accused of shooting Kenzie Houk in the back of the head while she was asleep with a child-sized shotgun his father had given him. Brown had five other guns in his bedroom. Because Houk and her unborn baby both died, Brown is facing two counts of premeditated murder. According to one doctor who examined Brown, he was resentful because he would be moved out of his room to make way for the new baby.
 
The judge overseeing the case, Dominick Motto, decided that Brown should be tried as an adult because, despite convincing physical evidence, he has refused to admit guilt and has shown no remorse.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
Pennsylvania v. Jordan Anthony Brown (Court of Common Pleas, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania) (pdf)

Comments

defatty 13 years ago
My immediate doubt: Who really did the shooting? Next, if Jordan did the shooting, did he do it by choice? Or, did another person have a scheme? If so, when will that person be charged?
stephen 13 years ago
Many would ask if there is a chance that Jordan Brown will be acquitted and the short answer is “Yes, eventually.” But I emphasize “eventually.” The scandalous thing about this case is that there is, from Jordan’s perspective, no short answer. He has already spent 15% of his life in captivity, and his case has not even gone to trial. If this case drags out for another year, he will have spent more than 20% of his life in jail for something he didn’t do. Now here is the really sick thing: there is no incentive for the Neanderthal State to give Jordan a speedy trial. The longer the state can drag this out, the better it is for them—win or lose. When Jordan was snatched out of his bed in the middle of the night and thrown into an adult jail, he was a little kid whose feet dangled above the floor when he sat in a chair. Now his feet touch the floor, and he’s forty pounds heavier. If the state can drag this out long enough, he’ll be shaving by the time he comes to trial. He won’t look so small and innocent. He will have been hardened by his contact with young criminals. He will just look more like someone who could have committed a crime, whether he really did or not. Even if the state loses, it is better for some of the players if this happens in the distant future and not now or soon. Why? Because the Neanderthals have been pursuing their persecution of this child without any evidence that he committed thes heinous murders. All along the prosecutors have claimed there is “solid” or “strong” evidence that is the basis of their case against Jordan. But they have never shown us the evidence. They’ve only claimed they have it, and they have been making this claim up until the present day. Example from an October 1, 2009 statement as reported in the media: “The prosecution argued that Brown had gunshot residue on his shoulder…” Do you know how much gunshot residue was found on the shoulder of his shirt? Only one particle where there should have been thousands! “…and that his youth shotgun—found in the boy’s bedroom—smelled as if it had been recently fired.” Well, yes, the shotgun had been fired the day before the murder and Jordan had not cleaned it. But the prosecution has never admitted that the shotgun was not, and could not have been, the murder weapon. The prosecution’s own “strong evidence” shows that the entry wound was too small for the cause of death to have been a shotgun blast. There were too few pellets recovered from Kenzie’s wound and from the crime scene for it to have been a shotgun death. A handgun loaded with a shotshell was the murder weapon. This is the only conclusion to be drawn from the physical evidence the state actually has. If Jordan had used his shotgun as the police and prosecutors have claimed, he should have been covered from head to foot with gunpowder residue, as well as blood and brains—but he was not. Kenzie’s face should have been horribly disfigured, but it was not. A Houk family relative claimed that there had been postmortem facial reconstruction so there could have been an open-casket funeral, but I learned that this was a lie. The funeral director expressed surprise that no such reconstruction was necessary. Much has been made by the prosecution of a supposed threat by Jordan to “pop” Kenzie and her daughters—a claim carefully examined by Kenzie herself and found not to have been credible. The source of this fantastic claim was a Houk family member who is a convicted felon and purported drug dealer. How much credence should be given to his story? According to Kenzie (who should surely have known better than any of us): “None.” Another example from a February 23, 2009 media report: “The blue blanket, which has a quarter-sized hole that appeared to be singed from a shotgun blast, supports a claim that the crime was premeditated, Lawrence County District Attorney said. ‘The operating theory is that he covered the gun with the blanket to hide it when he came downstairs’ from his bedroom to shoot Houk, who was in a first-floor bedroom, Bongivengo said.” How much gunpowder residue—or blood and brains—did the state crime lab find on the blanket? None. The hole in the blanket proved to have been nothing more than an old cigarette burn. And yet this same blue blanket appears prominently in a third late-night police interview of Jenessa Houk, Jordan’s 7-year-old stepsister who had given police 2 previous interviews earlier in the day which did not implicate Jordan in any way. The crime lab’s analysis of the blue blanket provides strong evidence that Janessa’s 3rd interview was most likely coerced and manipulated by the police interviewer Trooper Janice Wilson, who has since retired from the state police. The state has been lying all along about the strength of its evidence, and it is in the state’s interest that the evidence not be shown for what it is (or should I say “isn’t”?) until all the liars are retired and sipping Piña Coladas on some distant beach.

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