A Pennsylvania boy who has maintained his innocence despite being convicted of killing his father's pregnant fiance at just 11 years old may get a new trial, CBS News reported on Tuesday.
The case of Jordan Brown, now 17, is being remanded back to juvenile court by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court so a motion can be filed challenging the weight of evidence used against him and asking for a new trial.
Brown was arrested in February 2009 and charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree murder. He was accused of shooting his father's pregnant fiance, 26-year-old Kenzie Houk, and her unborn child.
His attorneys successfully appealed the conviction in Pennsylvania Superior Court and in May 2013, his motion for a new trial was granted because "the juvenile court committed a palpable abuse of discretion in rendering a ruling that is plainly contrary to the evidence."
At trial, investigators claimed that Brown became jealous of Houk's unborn child, who later died of oxygen deprivation after Houk was shot. She was more than eight months pregnant when she was killed. Brown was arrested less than a day later, but most of the evidence against him is circumstantial, Omnifeed reported.
The juvenile court's guilty verdict was built almost entirely on the account of a landscaper who came to the home shortly after Brown and Houk's 7-year-old daughter got on the school bus after the murder. He said Houk's 4-year-old daughter came out of the house crying and said "My mommy is dead, she won't wake up."
The landscaper also testified that it had snowed that day, and there weren't any tire tracks leading up to the house or any foreign footprints. The state Superior Court found that the juvenile court's decision to conclude that, based on the testimony, that no one else had approached the home was invalid. The court found that the landscaper didn't testify about footprints anywhere else on the property.
Investigators found no blood, fingerprints or DNA of Brown's gun, the one the prosecution said he used in the attack. An autopsy concluded that Houk was shot with a small caliber shotgun, but investigators could not pinpoint if it was Brown's gun that was used.
Another potential suspect is Houk's ex-boyfriend, Adam Harvey. Houk and her family had an order or protection against Harvey at the time of the murder after Harvey called Houk's mother in February 2008 and threatened to "take out" her whole family.
