Attorneys for Jordon Brown, child murder suspect seek to have key evidence thrown out

July 3, 2009

By Eric Poole, Calkins Media

timesonline.com

NEW CASTLE, PA — Attorneys for an 11-year-old accused of killing his father’s fiancee and her unborn child sought to suppress much of the evidence, including a weapon that might have been used in the murder, during a hearing Thursday in Lawrence County Court.

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Jordan Brown is accused in the Feb. 20 murder of Kenzie Houk of New Beaver, who was nine months pregnant. She was carrying the unborn son of Brown’s father, Christopher.

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David Acker and Dennis Elisco, Brown’s attorneys, attempted to suppress three elements of the prosecution’s case in the hearing before Judge Dominick Motto: an initial interview state police had with the boy; a search warrant for the home of Houk and Christopher Brown; and a search warrant for Brown’s school records obtained three days after the killing.

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The first two suppression motions could be important to the case. In the interview between state police Trooper Janice Wilson and Brown on Feb. 20 at Mohawk Elementary School, Elisco said in court Thursday, Brown was stripped of his constitutional protections because his father was not present during that questioning.

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It was in that interview that Brown is alleged to have made his first statements about a black truck on the family’s property the morning of Houk’s murder. State police and prosecutors have said inconsistencies with Brown’s statements on the truck were among the factors that led them to suspect the boy.

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George Sperdute, a guidance counselor at Mohawk Elementary School, said school policy dictated that officials attempt to contact Christopher Brown when Wilson asked to speak with Jordan Brown shortly after noon Feb. 20. “At the elementary level, the parents need to be notified,” Sperdute said Thursday.

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Because the school was unable to contact any of Jordan’s family, Sperdute testified that he served as the boy’s advocate during the interview with Wilson. However, Christopher Brown said in his testimony that he never received a call from the school. He said that the school had his cell phone as a contact number and that he was at his home — where he has cell phone coverage — from the time Wilson left the crime scene until after she began talking with Jordan.

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Christopher Brown said that he would have denied Wilson permission to talk with his son. The defense also is contesting a search warrant used to search the Brown-Houk house. A shotgun, which is believed to have been used in the murder, was found in that search. Elisco said the search warrant was invalid because state Trooper Joseph Vascetti neglected to sign a space on the document’s lead page. grasping at straws, here.

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Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo, who is prosecuting the case, said he isn’t concerned about the motions to suppress evidence because the search warrant affidavit of probable cause, which he deemed more important, was signed and sworn by both the trooper and District Judge Jerry Cartwright.

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Bongivengo said Brown was not a suspect and was not in police custody at the time of the initial questioning by Wilson and Miranda-type protections such as the right to have a parent present during the questioning of a child did not apply.

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The defense attorneys also filed motions seeking evidence that they have not received, including ballistics studies on the weapon suspected of being used in the murder.

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Bongivengo said the prosecution is not withholding any evidence and some items are not yet available because they are being examined by the state police crime lab.

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Bongivengo said a decision on the defense filings won’t probably be issued until next month.

Attorneys for Jordan Brown plan to file a motion by next month to have the 11-year-old New Beaver boy tried as a juvenile for the murder of his father’s fiancee and her unborn child.

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Dennis Elisco, one of the attorneys, said Brown will be examined in the next few weeks by what he called an expert psychologist. And then Elisco and co-counsel David Acker will file to have Brown tried in juvenile court.

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“That will happen, but the psychological tests have not been completed,” Elisco said.