Jordan Brown set out to prove he should never have been arrested for the 2009 shooting death of his father’s pregnant fiancee.

He failed.

A federal jury Thursday said the four state troopers who led the investigation and accused then-11-year-old Brown of killing Kenzie Houk had probable cause to charge the boy.

The decision, reached after nine hours of deliberations over two days, brings to an end Brown’s civil case accusing the troopers of malicious prosecution and fabrication of evidence.

Adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court for killing Kenzie Houk and her unborn baby and incarcerated until he was 18, Brown won a measure of victory in 2018 when the state Supreme Court vacated his conviction, finding there was insufficient evidence to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Two years later, he sued, hoping he could clear his name once and for all.

But standing in his way was testimony by the defendants, who walked jurors through their investigation and explained why they ultimately decided to charge Brown.

Brown, 27, showed no visible reaction in the courtroom to the verdict and did not speak to reporters when he left the courthouse in Downtown Pittsburgh.

The jury foreman also declined to comment.

But Jennifer Kraner, Houk’s older sister, said Thursday she is happy with the outcome.

“This has been awful to relive this. Nothing’s going to change it to bring my sister back or that baby,” she said. “I’m very thankful. I’m happy to be done with this.”

A hard-fought case

Brown’s attorneys, Alec Wright and Steve Barth, were ready for what would have been the second phase of the trial, meant to tally damages, if the jury had found the troopers liable.

They planned to call as many as a dozen witnesses to show the impact the arrest and subsequent seven years of incarceration had on their client.

Among the listed witnesses were corrections officers who saw the young boy throughout his time in custody, his counselor while in detention, friends of Brown’s who could describe the damage to his reputation and his father and grandmother.

The plaintiffs also expected to call an expert who would have testified about the impact of solitary confinement on a young child’s development.

“It was a hard-fought battle,” Wright said. “Now, it’s time to take a pause and figure out what’s next.”

Wright was surprised and disappointed by the verdict.

“This has been a 15-year experience for somebody who was 11 years old and has two phases of life — being incarcerated at 11 and getting out,” he said.

Meeting Brown and working with him for the past four years, Wright said, has made his life better.

“Resilient, kind, gentle, empathetic, sympathetic, honest, decent,” Wright said of his client. “These words do not even begin to paint the picture of the young boy in his Mohawk football jersey that is now the grown man we see today.”

Wright said he raises his own children to conform to that character.

“That is the real Jordan Brown.”

Pennsylvania State Police General Counsel Brendan O’Malley, who represented the troopers at trial, also commended Brown.

“Mr. Brown seems to have benefited from the rehabilitation, and he seems to be an individual that has turned into a young man that people can be proud of,” O’Malley said.

But, he continued, the verdict vindicated the troopers’ actions and their investigation.

“What’s lost in all of this is that a mother was taken from her children, and a family lost their daughter,” O’Malley said.

Focus on Brown

On Feb. 20, 2009, Brown and his father, Chris Brown, were living in a rented Lawrence County farmhouse with Houk and her two daughters, who were 7 and 4.

That morning, Houk’s body was found lying in bed. Due to have a baby in just a week, she had been killed with a shotgun blast to the back of her head.

Her unborn son also died.

First responders initially didn’t realize Houk was the victim of a homicide. Then, when the coroner alerted them that Houk had been shot to death, troopers started to identify possible suspects.

They quickly cleared Chris Brown, who was at work that morning. They then focused on Houk’s ex-boyfriend, who had been violent with her in the past, her family said, and was the subject of a restraining order.

At the same time, investigators went to Mohawk Elementary School where Jordan Brown and Houk’s older daughter, Jenessa Houk, were students and spoke to both of them.

The children described a typical morning at home before they left to catch their bus about 8:15 a.m.

But, as the day wore on, troopers eliminated the ex-boyfriend as a person of interest and began to focus on Jordan Brown.

By 3:30 the next morning, he was arrested for criminal homicide and homicide of an unborn child.

Enough probable cause

Juvenile court proceedings are not open to the public, and, while Brown spoke to a TV crew for a 20/20 special on the case after his conviction was vacated, the trial marked the first time Brown and Jenessa Houk testified.

The civil case, which included five days of testimony, gave jurors insight into the first hours of the investigation – the state police response; the way they handled the crime scene; how troopers were assigned to do interviews; and their investigative practices.

During closing arguments Wednesday, one of the lawyers representing the troopers told jurors the case was not about whether the troopers ran a perfect investigation — or even a good one.

Instead, Nicole Boland said, it was simply about whether the state police had enough probable cause to make an arrest.

She said they did.

Brown was the last person to see Houk alive and had gone into her bedroom that morning, Boland said. He also had access to a shotgun, which troopers said smelled like it had been recently fired. And Jenessa Houk told police she saw him with two long guns that morning and then heard “a big boom” before they left for school.

All of that, Boland said, was enough to establish probable cause.

During his closing, Wright focused on what he saw as the troopers’ mistakes that day – multiple interviews of Jenessa Houk and an inadequate investigation into Houk’s ex-boyfriend.

Wright told the jury state police failed to thoroughly investigate the ex’s alibi – he said he was with his father, who confirmed it in a phone call. They also did not administer a polygraph test, even though the ex-boyfriend said he would take one.

Wright also explained to the jury the law requires law enforcement officers to include all the information relevant to an investigation, including anything that might be exculpatory to the suspect, in their affidavit of probable cause for arrest.

In Brown’s case, Wright said, state troopers failed to include several details for the district judge.

Among them: that Jenessa Houk had been interviewed four times that day, with the final interview after midnight.

Her first two statements, Wright told the jury, provided an alibi for Brown, but the state police failed to reveal that to the district judge.

“That’s how they were able to arrest Jordan and change the course of the rest of his life forever.”

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