More than six years after he was exonerated, a man charged as an 11-year-old with shooting his father’s pregnant fiancee to death wants a jury to make the Pennsylvania State Police pay for the years he spent in juvenile detention. Jordan Brown’s federal civil rights case is expected to start in Pittsburgh next month, nearly 16 years after he was accused of the death of Kenzie Marie Houk inside their rented farmhouse in Wampum, Pa., reports the Associated Press. Pennsylvania is among a dozen states that do not have wrongful conviction compensation laws, leaving a lawsuit as Brown’s option to seek compensation for claims that four former troopers fabricated reports and manufactured evidence. Brown, now 27, was adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court of murder. He had been released at 18 before the state supreme court reversed his conviction.
The troopers have argued they did not fabricate or conceal any evidence, nor did they violate Brown’s constitutional rights. They’ve said they had probable cause to arrest him, given his opportunity to commit the crime and that he possessed a 20-gauge shotgun. Brown is seeking damages for emotional and mental harm, lost wages, legal costs and the time he spent in custody. The National Registry of Exonerations says about 800 civil awards since 1989 to exonerees have amounted to about $3.3 billion, or $325,000 for each year of wrongful incarceration. For Pennsylvania, 32 civil awards were worth a collective $110 million. “It’s hard to imagine a more horrifying experience than having been convicted of a crime you didn’t commit,” said George Washington University law Prof. Jeffrey Gutman, who maintains the exoneration compensation database. “You’ve lost your liberty, your livelihood, your family connections, potentially your health, often for decades, for something you didn’t do. So society owes people who have had a terrible roll of the dice a remedy for that.”
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