Boy faces adult trial in death of Pa. woman, fetus
A judge's ruling that a 12-year-old boy will be tried as an adult on charges of fatally shooting his father's pregnant fiancee is an unprecedented move, an advocate for defense attorneys says.
Jordan Brown is charged with criminal homicide in the death of 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk in their farmhouse in New Galilee, in western Pennsylvania, on Feb. 20, 2009. Houk was 8 1/2 months pregnant when she died of a shotgun blast to the back of her head as she lay in bed; the male fetus died from a resulting lack of oxygen.
Cynthia Orr, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, said she's never heard of someone as young as Brown charged with fetal homicide. Brown's attorneys are expected to appeal.
"It's simply inappropriate to put a 12-year-old child in the adult prison system, it won't work," said Orr, a Texas attorney. "It won't benefit society or this child."
In his opinion Monday refusing to move the case to juvenile court, Lawrence County Judge Dominick Motto called Houk's death "an execution-style killing of a defenseless pregnant young mother.
"A more horrific crime is difficult to imagine," he wrote.
Brown's attorneys, Dennis Elisco and David Acker, have argued the boy's case would best be dealt with in juvenile court, where he could receive treatment and incarceration specifically aimed at younger offenders.
Under state law, the attorneys had to convince the judge that he was more "amenable" to rehabilitation in the juvenile system — which would have jurisdiction only until he is 21 — than as an adult.
But the judge said the testimony of defense psychologist Kirk Heilbrun didn't convince him that Brown was best tried as a juvenile.
Motto focused on findings by a prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. John O'Brien, who found that Brown tended to "minimize" the allegations against him. Brown denied killing Houk when examined by both doctors.
Kevin Harley, spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general, said prosecutors agree with the decision but stressed that prosecutors could still decide to move the case to juvenile court themselves if he admits he committed the crimes.
"Our position is he isn't amenable (to juvenile court rehabilitation) because he didn't admit he did it and hasn't accepted responsibility for his actions," Harley said.
Orr said Harley's comments show that Pennsylvania's system is flawed if a child must, for all practical purposes, admit guilt to have a chance to be tried as a juvenile.
"That means this whole process is inappropriate and, certainly, unconstitutional," she said.
Debbie Houk, the victim's mother, said she doesn't understand why there would be debate about the decision.
"There was no reason for uncertainty in our eyes," Houk said. "We're pleased."
Prosecutors have said they will seek a conviction on first-degree murder charges, for which Brown could face up to life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors have suggested the boy was jealous of Houk and her unborn son. Police had said Brown hid the weapon under a blanket so Houk's 7-year-old daughter wouldn't see it as he entered her mother's room. Later, authorities say, he threw the spent shell casing along a path on his way to a bus and went to school.
A state trooper testified that tests showed the shell was fired from Brown's youth-model 20-gauge shotgun.
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The idea of crime has a long history. Some religious communities regard sin as a crime; some may even highlight the crime of sin very early in legendary or mythological accounts of origins — note the tale of Adam and Eve and the theory of original sin. What one group considers a crime may cause or ignite war or conflict. However, the earliest known civilizations had codes of law, containing both civil and penal rules mixed together, though not always in recorded form.
The Sumerians produced the earliest surviving written codes.[4] Urukagina (reigned ca. 2380 BC–2360 BC, short chronology) had an early code that has not survived; a later king, Ur-Nammu, left the earliest extant written law-system, the Code of Ur-Nammu (ca. 2100-2050 BC), which prescribed a formal system of penalties for specific cases in 57 articles. The Sumerians later issued other codes, including the "code of Lipit-Ishtar". This code, from the 20th century BCE, contains some fifty articles, and scholars have reconstructed it by comparing several sources.
The Sumerian was deeply conscious of his personal rights and resented any encroachment on them, whether by his King, his superior, or his equal. No wonder that the Sumerians were the first to compile laws and law codes.— Kramer[5]
Successive legal codes in Babylon, including the code of Hammurabi (ca. 1790 BC), reflected Mesopotamian society's belief that law derived from the will of the gods (see Babylonian law).[6] Many states at this time functioned as theocracies, with codes of conduct largely religious in origin or reference.
Sir Henry Maine (1861) studied the ancient codes available in his day, and failed to find any criminal law in the "modern" sense of the word. While modern systems distinguish between offences against the "State" or "Community", and offences against the "Individual", the so-called penal law of ancient communities did not deal with "crimes" (Latin: crimina), but with "wrongs" (Latin: delicta). Thus the Hellenic laws[7] treated all forms of theft, assault, rape, and murder as private wrongs, and left action for enforcement up to the victims or their survivors. The earliest systems seem to have lacked formal courts.
The Romans systematized law and applied their system across the Roman Empire. Again, the initial rules of Roman Law regarded assaults as a matter of private compensation. The most significant Roman Law concept involved dominion.[8] The pater familias owned all the family and its property (including slaves); the pater enforced matters involving interference with any property. The Commentaries of Gaius (written between 130 and 180 AD) on the Twelve Tables treated furtum (in modern parlance: "theft") as a tort.
Similarly, assault and violent robbery involved trespass as to the pater's property (so, for example, the rape of a slave could become the subject of compensation to the pater as having trespassed on his "property"), and breach of such laws created a vinculum juris (an obligation of law) that only the payment of monetary compensation (modern "damages") could discharge. Similarly, the consolidated Teutonic laws of the Germanic tribes,[9] included a complex system of monetary compensations for what courts would now[update] consider the complete[citation needed] range of criminal offences against the person, from murder down.
Even though Rome abandoned its Britannic provinces around 400 AD, the Germanic mercenaries – who had largely become instrumental in enforcing Roman rule in Britannia – acquired ownership of land there and continued to use a mixture of Roman and Teutonic Law, with much written down under the early Anglo-Saxon Kings.[10] But only when a more centralized English monarchy emerged following the Norman invasion, and when the kings of England attempted to assert power over the land and its peoples, did the modern concept emerge, namely of a crime not only as an offence against the "individual", but also as a wrong against the "State".[11]
This idea came from common law, and the earliest conception of a criminal act involved events of such major significance that the "State" had to usurp the usual functions of the civil tribunals, and direct a special law or privilegium against the perpetrator. All the earliest English criminal trials involved wholly extraordinary and arbitrary courts without any settled law to apply, whereas the civil (delictual) law operated in a highly-developed and consistent manner (except where a King wanted to raise money by selling a new form of writ). The development of the idea that the "State" dispenses justice in a court only emerges in parallel with or after the emergence of the concept of sovereignty.
In continental Europe, Roman law persisted, but with a stronger influence from the Christian Church.[12] Coupled with the more diffuse political structure based on smaller feudal units, various different legal traditions emerged, remaining more strongly rooted in Roman jurisprudence, but modified to meet the prevailing political climate.
In Scandinavia the effect of Roman law did not become apparent until the 17th century, and the courts grew out of the things — the assemblies of the people. The people decided the cases (usually with largest freeholders dominating). This system later gradually developed into a system with a royal judge nominating a number of the most esteemed men of the parish as his board, fulfilling the function of "the people" of yore.
From the Hellenic system onwards, the policy rationale for requiring the payment of monetary compensation for wrongs committed has involved the avoidance of feuding between clans and families.[13] If compensation could mollify families' feelings, this would help to keep the peace. On the other hand, the institution of oaths also played down the threat of feudal warfare. Both in archaic Greece and in medieval Scandinavia, an accused person walked free if he could get a sufficient number of male relatives to swear him unguilty. (Compare the United Nations Security Council, in which the veto power of the permanent members ensures that the organization does not become involved in crises where it could not enforce its decisions.)
These means of restraining private feuds did not always work, and sometimes prevented the fulfillment of justice. But in the earliest times the "state" did not always provide an independent policing force. Thus criminal law grew out what 21st-century lawyers would call torts; and, in real terms, many acts and omissions classified as crimes actually overlap with civil-law concepts.
The development of sociological thought from the 19th century onwards prompted some fresh views on crime and criminality, and fostered the beginnings of criminology as a study of crime in society. Nietzsche noted a link between crime and creativity – in The Birth of Tragedy he asserted: "The best and brightest that man can acquire he must obtain by crime". In the 20th century Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish made a study of criminalization as a coercive method of state control.
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