PITTSBURGH, Pa. — More than six years after he was acquitted due to insufficient evidence, a man accused as an 11-year-old of shooting his father’s pregnant fiancée to death is asking a federal jury to make the Pennsylvania State Police pay for the years he spent there. juvenile detention.

Jordan Brown’s federal civil rights lawsuit is expected to go to trial in Pittsburgh early next month, nearly 16 years after the first trial. He was charged in the February 2009 death of Kenzie Marie Houk at their rented farmhouse in Wampum, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is among about a dozen states without wrongful conviction compensation laws, leaving Brown’s legal option to seek damages for allegations that the four veterans fabricated reports and produced evidence.

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

The four veterans named in the case (one of whom is now deceased) took leading roles in the murder investigation, interviews and preparation of the affidavit of probable cause used to charge Brown. They are being sued for allegedly violating their federal civil rights by making accusations without probable cause and fabricating evidence. State police spokesman Myles Snyder said the agency would not comment on the case, following policy on pending cases.

Troopers argued that they did not fabricate or conceal any evidence and did not violate Brown’s constitutional rights. They said they had probable cause to arrest him, given what they viewed as his ability and opportunity to commit the crime and that he had a 20-gauge shotgun.

Brown is seeking compensation for emotional and mental harm, lost wages, legal costs and time spent in custody. His lawyer, Alec Wright, said Brown spent three or four years in child care until he was old enough to understand his situation.

“At this point Jordan has two options,” Wright said. “Succumb to the pain of not being able to see your family, not celebrate birthdays, not be free, or do your best to get through what your family says is doomed. He chose the latter.”

The National Registry of Exonerations says the nearly 800 civil damages awarded to exonerees since 1989 amount to about $3.3 billion, or roughly $325,000 for every year of wrongful incarceration. The records list 32 civilian awards for Pennsylvania totaling $110 million.

Jordan Brown is not among those listed in the National Registry of Exonerees because the registry requires certain evidence favorable to the defendant that was not presented at trial. In his case, juvenile proceedings were annulled due to insufficient evidence.

“It’s hard to imagine a more terrifying experience than being convicted of a crime you didn’t commit,” said Jeffrey Gutman, a George Washington University law professor who maintains the exoneration awards database. “You’ve lost your freedom, your livelihood, your family connections, possibly your health for decades, because of something you didn’t do. So society owes a remedy for this to people who have made a terrible roll of the dice.”

Jordan and her father, Chris Brown, were living with Houk, 26, and her two daughters, ages 4 and 7, when Houk was shot and killed in her bed. Chris Brown had left for work and was eliminated as a suspect.

Police and prosecutors are pursuing a theory that Jordan Brown, then a fifth-grader, used a .20-gauge youth-model shotgun to kill Houk, minutes before she drove into the snow-covered driveway to meet up with her and Houk’s 7-year-old daughter. fell. school bus in the morning.

The shooting came to light when a crew collecting firewood noticed Houk’s 4-year-old daughter crying at the front door around 9 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2009. At 3 a.m. the next day, Brown was charged as an adult. however, his case was later sent to juvenile court. In 2012, Brown was convicted; This is the juvenile equivalent of being found guilty in Pennsylvania.

Houk’s sister, Jennifer Kraner, said she was in juvenile court for the case against Brown and believes he did this.

“Frankly, there will never be justice to bring him back,” Kraner said. “But we’re not comfortable with him being a millionaire. It looks absolutely ridiculous.”

A key piece of evidence for the prosecution came from investigators’ interviews with the 7-year-old boy. According to the lawsuit, the girl said she saw Jordan Brown with two guns and “heard a ‘big bang’ before Jordan got out and they went toward the bus.”

Brown argued in the lawsuit that the interviews “contained numerous inconsistencies and contradictions” and were unreliable.

The state Supreme Court released Brown, unanimously stating that investigators presented no eyewitnesses, DNA or fingerprint evidence and that no blood or biological material was found on the child’s clothing.

Police investigated Houk’s ex-boyfriend, who had moved 10 miles (16 kilometers) from her home, but eliminated him as a suspect. According to the lawsuit, Houk said a paternity test showed Houk’s 4-year-old daughter was not his child and that he confronted Houk’s parents at a bar the night before Houk was killed.

The lawsuit alleges that the ex-boyfriend made death threats against Houk and several of her relatives, but she denied doing so during Brown’s deposition in juvenile court.

The ex-boyfriend told police in a voluntary interview that Houk was in the basement of her parents’ home after 10 p.m. the night before she was killed, the state Supreme Court’s 2014 case summary said. Brown told the hearing that he left around 9 a.m. the next morning to return an auto part to the store.

A test of their possession showed no gunshot residue, and there was still snow on Houk’s truck, which investigators say would not have survived the drive to the home where he was killed, according to the court summary.

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

Brown told the Associated Press when the case was filed four years ago that he hoped a favorable verdict would eliminate lingering doubts about his innocence.

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

These days, Brown runs a beer distributorship in Western Pennsylvania with his father and plans to finish his college education, Wright said.