The Lawrence County District Attorney's Office initially filed the charges in adult court because that is required in Pennsylvania homicide cases, regardless of a defendant's age.
Kenzie Houk was eight months pregnant when she was shot in the back of the head while she was sleeping in bed in their western Pennsylvania farmhouse.
The state Attorney General prosecutor asserted that Houk was killed by a youth-model Harrington & Richardson 20-gauge shotgun, a Christmas gift to Jordan from his father.
Pennsylvania State Police found a spent shotgun shell near the path Brown walked with Houk's older daughter to get to their school bus.
On weekends Jordan hunted alongside his father, Chris Brown, who purchased the youth-sized 20-gauge shotgun that state police believed was the murder weapon.
The youth's father did not publicly discuss the case, until after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court exonerated his son nine years later in July 2018.
Then the issue became whether Brown's eventual adjudication hearing (juvenile court trial) should be opened to the public, and whether he should provisionally be released while a decision in that matter was pending.
[11] After those newspapers decided not to pursue their appeal further, Judge Hodge was directed by another panel of the Superior Court to move swiftly to hold an adjudication hearing.
Judge Hodge adjudicated the now-15-year-old Jordan Brown to be delinquent (the juvenile court equivalent of a guilty verdict).
But authorities transferred him to a juvenile center in March 2009 after his attorneys argued that the adult jail with its three cell blocks couldn't accommodate an 11-year-old boy.
Judge Hodge put Brown on probation in the custody of an uncle who lived in Ohio, just across the border from Lawrence County.
Judge Hodge issued a juvenile court opinion on April 19, 2015, again finding that Jordan was the individual who killed Kenzie Houk and her unborn child on the morning of February 20, 2009.