Apr 28, 2004 By Jennifer Harr 2 min read

If Troy Edward Mickens opts to go to trial on charges he carried out a contract killing, Fayette County prosecutors will be allowed to use prior testimony from a key witness who died since Mickens’ arrest. The state Supreme Court ruled Monday that it would not review a decision allowing prosecutors to read testimony from Brian Harbarger into the record if Mickens goes to trial.

Harbarger, the key witness in the case, died in an auto accident in November 2002. He provided police with information that Mickens allegedly admitted to him that he accepted $5,000 to kill Randall Jordan in late 1992 or early 1993. At Mickens’ preliminary hearing in the homicide case, Harbarger testified before a district justice.

Mickens’ attorney, Thomas Ceraso, unsuccessfully asked Judge Steve P. Leskinen to bar Harbarger’s testimony. He claimed that Harbarger was not effectively cross-examined at the preliminary hearing, and that his criminal record was not brought up.

After Leskinen ruled against Ceraso, he filed an appeal to the state Superior Court.

That appeal was denied because he waited too long to file it. The appeal to the Supreme Court followed.

Although Jordan was found shot to death in 1993, police were initially unable to make an arrest in the case. The tide changed when Harbarger came forward and Mickens, a former Connellsville High School athletic standout, was arrested in April 2000.

The case was originally scheduled to end with a plea. In 2001, Mickens agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in another homicide trial in exchange for a third-degree murder plea. He did testify in that trial, but ultimately withdrew his guilty plea in favor of going to trial himself.

The case will be scheduled for trial in the coming months.