Pennsylvania Closed trial begins for boy suspect

The Associated Press NEW CASTLE, Pa. (AP) -- A juvenile court trial that will be closed to the public began Tuesday for a western Pennsylvania boy who was just 11 when he was charged with murdering his father's pregnant fiancée and unborn child. Jordan Brown, of Wampum, who is now 14, is charged by Lawrence County prosecutors with killing 26-year-old Kenzie Houk with a shotgun moments before he left for school from the rural farmhouse they shared with Brown's father and Houk's two young daughters in February 2009. Investigators have suggested Brown was jealous of Houk's unborn son, who died of oxygen deprivation, after Houk was shot, execution-style, by Brown with his youth-model .20-gauge shotgun that he allegedly sneaked downstairs under a blanket as Houk lay in bed. Houk was more than eight months pregnant. Brown's attorneys have promised to contest the charges -- but that will happen beyond media scrutiny because the case has been moved from Common Pleas court, where Brown faced up to life in prison, to a juvenile setting where the court's jurisdiction ends when he turns 21. Lawrence County Judge John Hodge scheduled Brown's trial -- which the attorneys involved expect will last two to four days -- after rejecting a defense motion last week to release the boy from a juvenile detention center in Erie. Brown has been held there since shortly after he was charged. Brown initially was charged as an adult as required by state law in homicide cases and details of the case then became part of the public record and were widely reported as a result. His lawyers successfully appealed to Superior Court which ordered a judge to reconsider Brown's "adult" status, after which the case was moved to juvenile court last year. State law says juvenile court trials for certain serious felonies, including homicide, must be public if the defendant was at least 12 at the time of the crime, but judges have discretion to close trials for younger defendants, which Judge Hodge did in this instance. The Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the New Castle News appealed to keep the trial open in juvenile court given the publicity the case had already received, during which Christopher Brown, the boy's father, had gone on ABC's "Good Morning America" to proclaim the boy's innocence at one point. The Superior Court rejected the newspapers' claims that past publicity, including claims of Jordan's innocence, made the pending verdict a matter of intense public interest, however. Houk's family has also objected to closing the juvenile court trial. Published: Wed, Apr 11, 2012