Lawsuit against police officers investigating 11-year-old murder nears trial

More than six years after he was acquitted on the basis of insufficient evidence, a man charged with shooting dead his father’s pregnant fiancee when he was 11 wants a federal jury to make Pennsylvania State Police pay for the years he spent in prison. detention of minors.

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 Hawk at their rented farmhouse in Wampum, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is among about a dozen states that do not have laws compensating for wrongful convictions, leaving the lawsuit as Brown’s legal option to seek compensation for allegations that four former service members fabricated reports and fabricated evidence.

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

The four former military members (one of whom is now deceased) named in the lawsuit played leading roles in the murder investigation, conducting interviews and writing the probable cause affidavits used to charge Brown. They were sued on charges that they violated his federal civil rights by making false accusations and fabricating evidence. State Police spokesman Miles Snyder said the agency, as a matter of policy regarding pending litigation, would not comment on the lawsuit.

Police say they did not fabricate or hide any evidence and did not violate Brown’s constitutional rights. They said they had probable cause to arrest him given they believed he was capable and likely to commit the crime and that he was in possession of a 20-gauge shotgun.

Brown is seeking damages for mental and emotional damages, lost wages, legal fees and the time he spent in custody. His lawyer Alec Wright said Brown spent three or four years in a juvenile detention facility before he was old enough to realize his predicament.

“Jordan has two options at this point,” Wright said. “Give in to the pain of not seeing your family, not celebrating birthdays, not being free, or doing everything you can to overcome this situation that your family says has a finite end. He chose the latter.”

The National Registry of Exonerees reports that since 1989, about 800 civil awards to exonerees have totaled about $3.3 billion, or approximately $325,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment. In Pennsylvania, the registry lists 32 civilian awards totaling $110 million.

Jordan Brown is not among those listed on the National Registry of Exonerations because the registry requires some evidence in favor of the defendant that was not presented in court. In his case, the juvenile’s conviction was overturned due to insufficient 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 a database of exoneration awards. “You have lost your freedom, your livelihood, your family connections and possibly your health, often for decades, because of something you didn’t do. So society owes it to people who have had terrible luck to find a cure for it.”

Jordan and his father, Chris Brown, were living with Hawk, 26, and her two girls, ages 4 and 7, when Hawk was shot and killed in her bed. Chris Brown went to work and was ruled out as a suspect.

Police and prosecutors have theorized that Jordan Brown, then a fifth-grader, used a youth-model 20-gauge shotgun to kill Hawk moments before he and Hawk’s 7-year-old daughter walked down a snowy road to meet. morning school bus.

The shooting came to light when a crew collecting firewood realized Hawk’s 4-year-old daughter was crying at the front door around 9 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2009. By 3 a.m. the next day, Brown was charged as an adult: although his case was later transferred to juvenile court. Brown was adjudicated delinquent in 2012, the juvenile equivalent of a conviction in Pennsylvania.

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

“Obviously, justice can never bring her back,” Kraner said. “But we are not happy with this because he becomes a millionaire from this. This seems absolutely ridiculous.”

Key evidence for the prosecution was obtained during investigators’ interviews with a seven-year-old child. According to the lawsuit, the girl said she saw Jordan Brown with two guns and that “she heard a ‘big bang’ before Jordan got out and they walked toward the bus.”

In the lawsuit, Brown argued that the interviews “contained numerous inconsistencies and contradictions” and were not reliable.

The state Supreme Court cleared Brown, unanimously saying investigators presented no eyewitnesses, no DNA or fingerprints, no blood or biological material on the boy’s clothing.

Police were investigating Hawke’s ex-boyfriend, who had just moved 10 miles (16 kilometers) from her home, but ruled him out as a suspect. Hawk told him that a paternity test showed Hawk’s 4-year-old daughter was not his child, and the night before Hawk was killed, he ran into Hawk’s parents at a bar, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that the ex-boyfriend made death threats against Hawk and several of her relatives, although he denied this in testimony at Brown’s juvenile court hearing.

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

A test of his hands revealed no evidence of a gunshot, and there was still snow on his truck that investigators said would not have survived the trip to the home where Hawk was killed, according to court records.

Brown told police that he saw a black pickup truck on the property on the morning of the murder that matched the description of his ex-boyfriend’s Ford F-150. Wright believes no murder investigation has been conducted since the state Supreme Court freed his client. Lawrence County District Attorney Joshua LaMancusa did not respond to a message seeking comment.

When the lawsuit was filed four years ago, Brown told The Associated Press that he hoped a positive verdict could dispel any remaining doubts about his innocence.

“You can’t just win a lawsuit over injustice without cause,” he said.

Brown currently runs a beer distribution company with his father in western Pennsylvania and plans to pursue higher education, Wright said.

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