It’s often said that justice is blind. This is usually meant to imply something noble. The saying was intended to mean that justice is applied equally to everyone no matter the circumstances of their life or arrest. However, the actual practice of justice doesn’t always live up to that theory. Sometimes people find themselves facing a system that refuses to properly examine the evidence. This seems to be the case for a young man named Jordan Brown. While Jordan is young, he’s had far less of a life than he should have. This is due to the fact that most of his childhood was spent behind prison bars. He was first thrown in prison when he was just eleven years old. Jordan would spend the following nine years in prison trying to convince the justice system of his innocence. It’s important to keep his age in mind when considering his story. Just how well or how eloquently could an eleven-year-old argue his innocence? How long could he be expected to do so before his spirit finally broke? It’s hard to imagine many children who could keep up the fight for their innocence for a year. But Jordan Brown managed it for nine years before finally receiving a chance to argue his case in court. This was the culmination of a truly horrific chain of events that had begun with murder.
Brown was initially charged with the murder of his own father’s fiancee – Kenzie Houk. The horror of this event, and accusation, was compounded by the fact that the woman was pregnant at the time. Tragically, she was a full eight months into the pregnancy. In one single day, Brown would lose both his maternal figure and the promise of a new sibling. It seemed at the time that he may well lose his quality of life as well. The court found him guilty of the murder and sentenced him with all of the severity expected of such a crime. It certainly seemed like Jordan would be well into the twilight of his life by the time he might be eligible for release. Or at least that’s the state of things unless he was able to prove his innocence. Kenzie had been murdered by a shotgun wound on the back of her head. Much of the court’s decision rested on the fact that Jordan owned a shotgun. One might well wonder how the court was able to link the wound with a specific shotgun. And this is one of the more glaring issues with the case. Because there really was no evidence of the murder being committed with Brown’s shotgun. And shotguns were hardly a rare find in the area.
On the day of the murder, Jordan had gone to school with Kenzie’s oldest daughter. However, Kenzie’s youngest daughter would make a tragic discovery later that day. The young girl would discover her mother laying in a pool of her own blood. Jordan would be linked to the murder solely due to the fact that he owned a shotgun. The evidence held up by the prosecution in Jordan’s case was even more flimsy. Most children feel isolated at times when their parents remarry. This is especially true when the marriage involves the addition of new step-siblings into the home. The prosecution pointed to Jordan’s feelings of being left out of the family as a motive. However, the investigation would later show that there was a far more plausible suspect. Kenzie’s ex-boyfriend was notoriously belligerent toward her. He was commonly overheard making threats against her. And two weeks before the murder he received the results of a paternity test which showed Kenzie wasn’t pregnant with his child. The night before Kenzie’s murder the ex-boyfriend was kicked out of a nightclub where he’d been in the midst of an angry confrontation with her parents. All of this points to a likely suspect who isn’t Jordan. Likewise, on revisiting the cast it was seen just how flimsy the potential evidence against him was. And with that discussion, the court finally gave the young man his long-overdue freedom.
