Boy, 12, May Get Life In Slay Of Pregnant Woman

[Kadie]

Feb 13, 2010 9:45 am US/Pacific
Boy, 12, May Get Life In Slay Of Pregnant Woman
Jordan Brown Charged With 2 Counts Of Homicide For Allegedly Shooting Father's Pregnant Fiancée

PITTSBURGH (CBS News) ― How young is too young for a child to go on trial for murder?

Jordan Brown, a 12-year-old western Pennsylvania boy, is accused of killing his father's fiancée a year ago.

If prosecutors get their wish, he could become one of the youngest Americans ever to face life in prison.

Brown is accused of taking a 20-gauge shotgun and murdering Kenzie Houk, 26, in their farmhouse. Houk, eight-months pregnant, also lost the child.

Brown was charged with two counts of homicide in May. He pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors allege there was tension between the boy and Houk, adding he was jealous of her and her two children, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace.

"This is an execution-style killing," contends prosecutor Anthony Krastek. "You could not be more defenseless and innocent than this woman" was.

snip...
At a recent court hearing, a psychologist called by the defense said Brown told him he didn't kill Houk.

The defense contends the only witness -- the victim's now 8-year old daughter -- is unreliable and changed her story when talking to investigators.

more...
http://cbs13.com/national/Jordan.Brown.jail.2.1492869.html

[Blue-Jay]

1. Awful story, but have newspapers fired all of their editors?

[MineralMan]

6. Are you have trouble in understand the headline?

The death of the gerund is something that needs fixed.

[Blue-Jay]

10. Yes. I certainly am "have trouble in understand the headline".

Thanks for pointing that out.

:rofl:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. A horrid story like this, and you two make jokes about headline grammar?

Well done, Sirs, well done. :thumbsup:

[Fenris]

20. Very nice.

:thumbsup:

[Warpy]

2. C'mon, guys, he's TWELVE

While kids that age have some concept of death, it's really doubtful he wanted to do anything beyond the Wile-E-Coyote thing to her and fully expected her head to grow back. Kids that age do a lot of magical thinking. They also have poor impulse control.

I'd say get the kid into a mental hospital and re evaluate him at 21.

[Dappleganger]

3. In agreement. nt

[bettyellen]

7. but 9 years in a hospital will screw him up too. there's no place for a kid who des evil shit like

this. it's hard to say what the right thing is here. i think 12 is old enought to know shooting someone is seriously wrong + permanent. he tried to muffle the blast, he was trying to get away with murder. dumb people to let that kid near a gun.

[Warpy]

12. Either he's a psychopath or he's had shit parenting

and it's just not going to get any worse than murder. He's already screwed up. Maybe trained staff can rehabilitate this kid. Maybe not.

They need to be given a chance. He's TWELVE.

[bettyellen]

8. .

[lbrtbell]

13. 12-year-olds are smarter than that

He's 12, not 5--he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. This was very deliberate, premeditated murder. I do agree, though, that he should be put into a mental hospital. Prison will only make him worse, assuming that's even possible. :(

[Chulanowa]

18. I don't agree with your assessment of the "Wile E. Coyote" thing...

But I DO seriously doubt that he considered for a moment, exactly HOW serious what he was doing was. At that age, you act, THEN think. You're not living in a fantasy pretend world unless something is wrong in your head... but you still act very impulsively and irrationally.

He knew he was shooting the woman. I doubt that he actually understood exactly what that would mean. He understood that he could get in trouble for it, but not how much. At this age, kids are still very self-absorbed, irrational creatures.

He's not a monster. He's a stupid kid who did something exceptionally stupid. He's certainly not an adult.

[Ex Lurker]

25. my granddad died when I was twelve

I knew exactly what it was all about. I'm not saying lock the kid up for the rest of his life, but a 12 year old of average or higher intelligence should have an awareness of the finality of death.

[mitchum]

4. Fair enough

[Cirque du So-What]

5. WTF? An 11-year-old having access to a shotgun?

If he's to be given a pass for his youth - too young to know right from wrong - then he's too young to be allowed access to a shotgun & the shells that go in it. Reading the article, I see that he used a blanket to muffle the noise from the blast. That's not the act of an innocent babe IMO.

[kickysnana]

9. A man in MN just got 22 mos for killing his girlfriends 18 month old.

11 is too young for a life sentence unless psychiatrists rule him as untreatable. I had an 11 year old who flew into rages because his Dad was picking up his girlfriends kids at his elementary school and skipping his time with him. First thing we did is redirect his anger to metal trash cans. (I warned the neighbors) I told him I could buy more trashcans but I couldn't buy another him and the rages were not going to get him what he wanted or needed and then we got some counseling. He got a neat stepsister out of the deal.

Hormonally enhanced emotions at that age are difficult to learn to control and thinking about future consequences when enraged is also absent.

[Jackpine Radical]

14. A 12 year-old does not have the brain of an adult.

The frontal lobes (executive functions) aren't even fully myelinated at that age. Who knows what the whole story is here? You can be sure there is much more involved than was reported. As for muffling the gun blast, how often was that modeled for this kid on TV?

And on another front, what makes anyone think that psychiatrists can reliably identify kids who are beyond treatment? One thing you learn quickly in the juvie jstice system is that kids of that age are still subject to major personality changes. I have often seen two MMPI-A's (adolescent personality tests) administered a few months apart to the same kid, and many of the supposedly relatively stable traits are very different.

[Obamanaut]

15. But the lad certainly had the trigger finger of an adult. Try him as an

adult and if found guilty, send him to a juvenile facility until he's 18, then off to the big boy prison for life, or at least for a very long time.

[Mixopterus]

21. It's not that simple

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/whenkidsgetlife/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid

[depakid]

23. That's the sort of attitude that's given America a well deserved reputation

as both having a barbaric criminal laws- and also made it so simple and easy to devolve into a nation of torturers.

The poetic justice is of course that this very same sort of attitude plays a major role in bankrupting states with immense correctional expenditures- and the federal government through the pursuit of violent retribution against other nations.

[Swamp Rat]

27. -1

[FreakinDJ]

11. Chances are very great it was more then "Jealous of her and her children"

I think this boy was being kicked to the curb to the point of emotional and physical abuse

[hayu_lol]

16. It would help immensely if journalists(so-called anyway)...

would get the 'whole' story before jumping into print. We still do not understand what motivates some people to do these things and others not.

Long term in a mental health facility for kids, then evaluated. The kid himself will have to eventually deal with what he has done.

More details need to be forthcoming.

[Triana]

17. There are no journalists these days - the main interest is getting a sensational story out first

facts be damned (even if they have to make stuff up or twist it around to make it more "interesting") - and full story and all relevant info be damned too.

Welcome to what is society's main source of "news" these days: MEDIALOIDS (media infected by tabloid-style "journalism"). It's why people are so damned ignorant.

It's all about the ratings (and advert sales and money). That's it. "Infotainment" value.

Pfft.

[depakid]

22. Pennsylvania really has a problem with its kids

When it's not something over the top like this- it's sending them off to juvenile detention camps for the slightest offences -and that hasn't stopped DESPITE a couple of judges being convicted on corruption and kickback charges.

[Douglas Carpenter]

24. do those who say a 12y/o should be tried as an adult also think the age of consent should be 12?

how about the drinking age, should that also be 12? Should the driving age also be 12? Should a 12 year old be able to decide to live on their own and decide whether or not they go to school?

The entire principle of a juvenile justice system is the same as the principle of age of consent laws; the belief that children or adolescents below a certain age lack the fully developed mental and emotional facilities to make adult level decisions and choices and are simply too young to adequately and fully understand what they are doing or consenting to - and are thus granted special legal protections - specifically because they are not deemed capable of fully understanding what they are doing and what are the entire consequences and meanings of their actions.

The entire rational basis of legally protecting someone that age from corruption and exploitation by adults, presumes that someone so young does not have all the faculties to handle adult decisions. It is just so obvious that if almost everyone agrees that a 12-year-old is too young to make rational decisions about drinking, driving, going to school, having sex or even just living on their own - how on earth can someone turn around and declare that a 12-year-old has all the faculties to be tried and punished as an adult? - as if the most desperate and out of control action they ever took in their entire life - was the one and only area in which they were fully capable of understanding what they were doing.

If I may repost something once posted by PA Democrat who I thank for their contribution:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7540437#7541832

PA Democrat Jan22 -10


Scientific research shows that the parts of the brain responsible for impulse control, judgment, etc. do not fully mature for a NON-DISABLED person until sometime after the age of 21. For people with developmental disabilities the level of immaturity is much more pronounced.


http://teenagebrain.blogspot.com /


<snip>

We once thought that the brain was fully formed by the end of childhood, but research has shown that adolescence is a time of profound brain growth and change. We now know:

Between childhood and adulthood the brain’s “wiring diagram ” becomes more complex and more efficient, especially in the brain’s prefrontal cortex.

The greatest changes to the parts of the brain that are responsible for impulse-control, judgment, decision-making, planning, organization and involved in other functions like emotion, occur in adolescence. This area of the brain (prefrontal cortex) does not reach full maturity until around age 25!

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=adolescents_maturity_and_the_law

The recent push to lower the age threshold for treating juvenile offenders as adults assumes that adolescents are no different from adults in the capacities that comprise maturity and hence culpability, and that they have adult-like competencies to understand and meaningfully participate in criminal proceedings.

But the new science reliably shows that adolescents think and behave differently from adults, and that the deficits of teenagers in judgment and reasoning are the result of biological immaturity in brain development. The adolescent brain is immature in precisely the areas that regulate the behaviors that typify adolescents who break the law. Studies of brain development show that the fluidity of development is probably greatest for teenagers at 16 and 17 years old, the age group most often targeted by laws promoting adult treatment.

Teens at these ages tend to be poor decision-makers when it comes to crime. They often lack the several elements of psychosocial development that characterize adults as mature, including the capacity for autonomous choice, self-management, risk perception, and the calculation of future consequences.

[Douglas Carpenter]

26. these stories are truly both said and chilling .. what kind of future will that little boy have now?

even under the most liberal of treatment with the most tolerant and reasonable approach, the little child's life is pretty much wrecked.

Obviously, the whole family and the family of the victim of this are facing wrecked lives also.

[DiverDave]

28. Red state hell, pittsburgh

they would fry the kid if they could.
OF COURSE he's too young, but the thumpers want their eye.

[Douglas Carpenter]

29. well, I grew up in Western PA and they were big on guns and fundie religion even when the economy

was thriving and the steel mill towns were booming with prosperity. Sure it tended Democratic, and people could be a bit left-wing on pure bread and butter economic issues - but only mildly to the left of Mussolini on social issues when they were in an exceptionally tolerant mood.

I was in the 9th grade at the time of the Kent State massacre - and I actually became famous for being the only kid in my whole class who thought shooting and killing the students who were demonstrating was a bad idea..

[hayu_lol]

30. Lessee...Daddy has a live in girlfriend who is pregnant...

has a couple of kids of her own. Did we get any details about this 12 year old's homelife? Don't think so.

Could have been that he was at the end of his rope: daddy siding with girlfriend and girlfriend not liking the 12 year old.

Another rush into print by a journalistic moron with a knuckleheaded editor.