By Mo Mozuch, Jamie Stone, Angela Taylor, and Katie Voelker

Early in 2003, Craig Elias, Jared Henkel and Jared Lischner were sentenced to life in prison in connection with the murder of their friend, Andrew Jones. Elias and Lischner were students at Duquesne University. All three were white, middle-class young men from the suburb of Mount Lebanon. In Spring 2004, the Duquesne University Civic Journalism class took on an investigation of this case as an example of inequities in the application of the death penalty in Pennsylvania.

The story of Andrew Jones’ death is a complicated narrative involving a group of friends whose drug dealing got out of hand. The three men convicted of Jones’ murder came from the affluent suburbs. Two were students and former football players at Duquesne. But they were not suburban victims of inner city influence, nor collegiate athletes caught up in the heat of the moment. Their pasts reveal a long history of violence and cruelty including repeated brushes with the authorities. Inner-city youth with a similar record might have been thrown out of school and sent to juvenile facilities or adult jails. With their comfortable backgrounds, academic excellence and white skin, however, these young men were able to hide most of their criminal involvement or escape with a slap on the wrist if they were caught. Finally, their untainted facades were torn down by the malicious acts that took place on March 22, 2002 …

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zapalla opted not to ask for the death penalty for Craig Elias, who was charged with first-degree murder. Once again, the young men were lucky. This time it was geography that worked in their favor. Common Pleas Judge Jeffery Manning, who presided over the murder trial, said: “I think this would have been a death penalty case if it were being tried in Philadelphia County.” The following account of the murder of Andrew Jones, mostly taken from court records, shows that he was kidnapped and tortured. These are both aggravating circumstances that can warrant the death penalty in Pennsylvania.

The following story is the first part of a three-part series compiled by Professor Maggie Patterson’s Civic Journalism class in the Spring of 2004.

PART ONE

 On the morning of Andrew Jones’ murder, Matthew Henkel awoke to his brother Jared’s heated cell phone conversation. It was March 22, 2002, and the conversation was something about missing safes. It was a cold day with an early spring snow still on the ground. Matt later testified to hearing Jared mention the names of both Andrew Jones and Anthony Brownlee. These names were familiar to Matt Henkel; they were two-fifths of a drug ring that included his younger brother Jared and his brother’s longtime friends Craig Elias and Jared Lischner. Elias and Lischner had attended Mt. Lebanon High School with his brother. Brownlee was the group’s cocaine supplier, and the gang kept their substantial earnings in a pair of safes inside a row house on West Sycamore St. in Mount Washington. Those safes, from what Matt overheard that morning, were now missing.

Although Matt Henkel generally steered clear of his brother’s dope slinging, according to court records he had occasionally sold pot for him. Matt had also once delivered a crowbar to Jared, who used it to pry open the trunk of a drug dealer’s car after Elias had pistol whipped the dealer and Lischner had sprayed him with bear mace.

The gang employed such tactics fairly often, according to testimony in the trial and in police reports. Elias’ former roommate Mike Latusek told police that Elias often bragged about using mace on people and jumping other drug dealers. Matt knew his younger brother was ripping off dealers with his friends. He testified to coming home one day to find Jared in the garage with Elias as they used a crowbar and a 50 pound weight to crack open a safe they had stolen from a drug dealer named Aaron Alon. The weight they used for the slipshod locksmithing was the same one later found chained to Andrew Jones’ chest when authorities pulled his body from the Ohio River.
Jared Henkel had been arrested twice for assault. One occasion occurred in 1997, when he was 16 years old. He and a group of other boys assaulted a man on a Port Authority trolley in Bethel Park in order to steal an attractive gold chain. In the second incident in March 2000, Henkel had sprayed mace into a car, hitting one passenger in the eyes and another with the backdraft.

Jared Henkel was also under investigation for supplying narcotics to an undercover police officer.

On the day of the murder, Matt Henkel could tell from the telephone conversation he overheard that his brother was out about to cause more trouble. When Matt left his parent’s house on Cochran Road at around 12:30 p.m., he took a roll of duct tape that he had seen sitting in the kitchen. He knew his brother had forgotten it, he later testified in court. He knew Jared’s methods.

On his way to the West Sycamore St. house, Matt got a phone call from his brother. Matt told Jared he would leave the duct tape behind a dumpster at a CoGo’s near the house, but when he arrived at the gas station, his brother, Craig Elias, and Jared Lischner were already waiting there for him.

Elias and Lischner,both of substantial size, were the muscle of the group. The 6-foot, 250- lb. Elias and the 6-foot-2-inch, 235- lb. Lischner had accumulated a well-known history of violence during their high school years that continued into their days as football players for Duquesne University.

Lischner’s violent past goes back to when he was 16. He attended a soccer game between Mount Lebanon and Upper St. Clair high schools and then followed students from the rival school out into the parking lot. A fight erupted, and Lischner broke the nose and several teeth of one Upper St. Clair student.

Elias began building a tough reputation alongside Lischner during their days at Duquesne University. One incident involved an assault on student John Worgul of South Side, who remembered it this way: “Lischner approached me in front of Saint Ann’s Residence Hall and hit me in the face with something. I knew Lischner, but he and I weren’t really good friends. He hit me for absolutely no reason. Then I stepped back and called him an a**hole for hitting me. Just then Elias jumped out of nowhere and punched me in the face. The incident was reported, and Lischner got kicked out of Saint Ann’s, but they didn’t get kicked off campus until the incident in Towers where they were beating people with fire extinguishers.” The incident in the Towers Living/Learning Center occurred in the spring of 2001. It was allegedly part of a war Elias and Lischner were having with two campus fraternities.

According to an interview in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tom Harrington, a member of one of the fraternities, had the misfortune of encountering Elias during the war. He described an incident at a party where Elias glared at him from across the bar. Elias allegedly approached Harrington, stared him in the eyes and said: “If you look at me the wrong way again, I’m going to cut your throat.” Harrigan had good reason to take Elias seriously.

During the investigation of Elias’ South Side apartment after the murder, police discovered a Polaroid picture of a man’s bloody face being crushed by a foot. They believe it was some kind of trophy picture. Elias, however, appeared to many people as an upstanding young man. He was a member of the National Honor Society in high school and an attentive pupil in several of his classes at Duquesne, but testimony from both Anthony Brownlee and Matt Henkel identified him as the man who conducted most of the torture and interrogation on the day of Andrew Jones’ murder.

PART TWO

On the afternoon of March 22, 2002, Matt Henkel handed a roll of duct tape over to his brother, Jared Henkel, Craig Elias and Jared Lishcner. The three men would use the tape later in the day to restrain Anthony Brownlee and Andrew Jones during a violent interrogation designed to obtain information regarding the whereabouts of two missing safes that contained money and narcotics used in their drug ring.

According to his own testimony, Matt Henkel drove around for a few hours after delivering the tape, and then went home. Elias, Lischner and Jared Henkel took the duct tape to the safe house at 220 W. Sycamore Street in Mt. Washington.

In his trial testimony, Brownlee said he originally rented the row house but later signed the lease over to Jared Henkel. The utility bills for the house were all registered under Jones’ name. The group – Brownlee, Jones, Henkel, Lischner and Elias – used the row house to store their cocaine, marijuana and drug money. In an upstairs bedroom, two safes that had been bolted into the wall were now missing, and a real drama was about to unfold among this band of drug brothers.

Meanwhile in another part of the city, Andrew Jones picked up Anthony Brownlee at approximately noon on March 22 in a Blazer he had borrowed from his friend, identified in court documents as Butch. Jared Lischner later set fire to this Blazer in a field in White Oak as part of a frenzied effort to cover up Jones’ murder.

When Brownlee got into the vehicle Jones told him about the missing safes that had contained approximately $5,000 in drug money. Driving around in the borrowed Chevy Blazer discussing the events of the day, Brownlee and Jones were clueless that one of them was enjoying his last Friday afternoon.

Jones called Jared Henkel’s cell phone, and they decided to meet at Mr. Pockets pool hall in the Parkway Center Mall to discuss the missing safes. After Brownlee and Jones arrived, Henkel called again and asked Jones to meet him at the West Sycamore Street apartment instead. Jones, upset after his conversation with Henkel, stormed out of the pool hall while Brownlee was talking to a friend, Scott Carlini. Brownlee, who apparently suspected trouble, gave Carlini $700 he was carrying for safe keeping. Once outside, Jones asked Brownlee to go with him to talk to Henkel and Elias. Brownlee reluctantly agreed.

When Jones and Brownlee arrived at the house, they found it empty. Brownlee noticed Nike Air Force One footprints in the snow around the house and a broken window in the kitchen. Brownlee and Jones went upstairs and saw the damaged wall that previously had held two valuable drug safes. Brownlee then headed to the basement where he retrieved less than a half an ounce of cocaine he had hidden there.

Moments later Elias, Lischner, and Jared Henkel arrived at the residence, and everyone went into the kitchen to examine the broken window. Elias, Lischner and Henkel asserted that whoever robbed the house had broken the window from the inside to make it appear as if someone broke in from the outside. Jones and Brownlee disagreed and said it appeared that the window had indeed been broken from the outside.

Upstairs, Brownlee, Henkel and Elias examined the room where the safes had been. Brownlee guessed that whoever robbed the house had to have used a crowbar. Elias asked Brownlee who he thought had stolen the safe. Brownlee guessed it might have been someone looking for revenge. Elias was unconvinced. He accused Brownlee, and hit him in the head and started choking him. He kicked Brownlee in the chest and head again, demanding information. Elias eventually dragged Brownlee down the steps and into the kitchen.

Brownlee later testified that while he was downstairs he saw Jones face down on the floor with Lischner on top of him, pushing his knee into Jones’ back and holding his arms behind him. Henkel brought a knife and the roll of duct tape, and they bound Jones’ arms and legs. Henkel and Lischner duct taped Brownlee as well, although his arms were bound in front of him, Brownlee testified.

Elias carried Brownlee and Jones upstairs. He threw Jones in the front bedroom and dropped Brownlee in the room where the safes had been. Elias repeatedly beat and choked Brownlee while interrogating him about the safes. Brownlee, protesting that he did not know, began to spit up blood. Elias told him to spit into his sock, not on the floor, Brownlee told the jury.

Frustrated that the questioning wasn’t yielding results, Elias carried Brownlee into the bathroom, dumped him in the tub, and left the room. He soon returned wearing gloves and brandishing a hammer. He hit Brownlee’s knee with the hammer and demanded information. When he didn’t cooperate, Brownlee testified, Elias took him back into the bedroom.

It was now around 2 p.m., and Jared Henkel called his brother Matt and told him to borrow a four-wheel drive truck from someone. Matt Henkel testified that he then called his friend Chris Gabig, and found out that Gabig’s truck wasn’t available for a few more hours.

Over the next several hours, Elias, Lischner and Jared Henkel did a round robin between the two West Sycamore Street bedrooms. According to Brownlee’s testimony, Elias did the beating and questioning in one room, while the other two watched whoever wasn’t being beaten. Brownlee pleaded for help, telling Lischner and Henkel he didn’t do it. Lischner simply told him he didn’t care. Eventually, Elias, Lischner and Jared Henkel allowed Brownlee to call his friend Scott Carlini—whom he had just seen at the pool hall—to negotiate a transfer of $4,000 that was to act as payment to pay for Brownlee and Jones’ release. Brownlee told Carlini over the phone to retrieve from his house a pair of shorts that had the money in the pocket and place those shorts inside Butch’s Blazer, which was parked near the W. Sycamore Street row house. A short time later, Jared Henkel, Elias and Lischner retrieved that money from the Blazer. Elias, however, continued to beat Brownlee and demand more money.

At one point, Brownlee began to scream. Elias put duct tape on his mouth, but as soon as he left the room, Brownlee worked it off. When Elias saw him without the duct tape on his mouth, he threw Brownlee back into the bathtub. When Elias left, Henkel entered and Brownlee bargained with him. He told Henkel he would give him anything he wanted if he let him go. Henkel originally resisted but later cooperated, Brownlee testified.

Over the sounds of Elias’ demanding voice, Brownlee could hear Jones being beaten in the other bedroom. He even overheard Jones tell the three men: “Let Tony [Brownlee] go. Do what you’re going to do to me and get it over with.” Shortly after hearing these words, Brownlee was allowed to leave the bedroom he was in and go to the bathroom to wash the blood from his face. On his way, he passed the room that Jones was in and caught a glimpse of him on the floor. It was the last time he would see Andrew Jones alive.

After Brownlee finished washing up, Elias came into the bathroom, enraged that Brownlee was no longer restrained. Elias left and came back into the room with a length of rope and began tying up Brownlee. Elias wrapped the rope around Brownlee’s throat and choked him. Brownlee feigned unconsciousness, he later said, and Elias left him in the bathroom while he went to talk to Lischner and Jared Henkel. When Elias came back downstairs, Matthew Henkel was there talking over the situation with his brother and Lischner. The four began to discuss the possibility of having to kill their hostages upstairs, Matt Henkel later testified.

When Matt Henkel arrived Jared told him to be quiet, saying that he didn’t want Brownlee or Jones to know Matt was at the house. Matt Henkel saw Elias heading upstairs with a pair of gloves on. Matt headed toward the kitchen and began quietly talking to his brother and Lischner about the situation. When Elias came downstairs and entered the conversation, Matt Henkel said that it would be too dangerous to kill both of the men upstairs. According to Matt Henkel’s testimony, the group agreed; however, Jared Henkel insisted that Andrew Jones was too dangerous to let go because he would seek retaliation against the group or their families. Jared told Matt: “We will never be safe again.” The group consensus was that Jones was a threat. Releasing Brownlee would be safe, they figured, because as a drug dealer, he wouldn’t go to the police. Jared Henkel went upstairs to get Anthony Brownlee. As Matt Henkel was heading back to the truck Elias pulled him aside. He explained to him that he needed him to come back with the 50-lb. weight that was at the Henkels’ residence on Cochran Road. He issued a warning to Matt Henkel: “Don’t make me come get you.”

Meanwhile Jared Henkel went upstairs and negotiated with Brownlee. Brownlee said he could bring them another $3,000. Jared Henkel escorted him downstairs and headed out to the truck where Matt Henkel was waiting. They got in the white Nissan pick-up truck, and the three drove to the Henkel residence. While in the truck, Brownlee thanked Jared Henkel for getting him out of “that situation,” Matt Henkel testified. Brownlee told Jared that he would get him 4 oz. of cocaine later, although it is unclear whether this was part of his ransom or business as usual.

When they arrived at the Henkels’ house, Matt pulled the truck around back and went into the kitchen. His father and two of Matt’s friends were sitting inside. Matt told his friends to leave, he said, because he did not want Brownlee to see them and think they were involved. Once the kitchen was cleared, Jared and Brownlee went upstairs. Matt went down into the basement and retrieved the weight for Elias. He headed back to West Sycamore Street without telling anyone where he was going.

Brownlee phoned a friend to come take him home. Brownlee later testified he had been in the West Sycamore Street house for about six hours. While he was held hostage, he received multiple facial, head, chest and knee injuries from Craig Elias. After he left the Henkel house, he went to Allegheny General Hospital to be treated. He testified during a coroner’s inquest to having gone back to the house with a group of friends later that night, but they found it empty. Brownlee finally went to police to report the incident at 4 a.m. on the morning of March 23, 2002.

PART THREE

Matthew Henkel arrived at the house on West Sycamore Street at about 8 p.m. on March 22, 2002, according to court documents. He had with him the 50-lb. weight that Craig Elias had asked him to bring. He approached the door, but it was locked. He knocked, and Elias, now the only one in the house besides Andrew Jones, answered his knock. Elias told Matt, “I want to show you something,” and led Henkel upstairs.

When Matt Henkel reached the top of the stairs, he saw Jones lying on the floor with his arms and legs bound with duct tape and a translucent bag secured tightly over his head. Henkel could see his lips and teeth pressed against the bag, and he smelled feces in the room. He asked Elias if Jones was alive, and Elias answered: “What the f**k do you think?”

He told Henkel he needed help wrapping the body, and Henkel wrapped Jones’ legs in garbage bags and Elias wrapped the torso. According to his own testimony, Henkel went outside and pulled the borrowed truck around to the back of the house, where Elias was waiting.

Matt Henkel helped Elias load the body into the bed of the white Nissan pickup. Elias went back inside and Henkel began fidgeting with the tailgate of the truck. His friend had told him it was broken, and that if he wanted it to close it would take a few tries. His efforts attracted the attention of a neighbor who came outside to see what Henkel was doing. Henkel, with Jones’ corpse inches away and concealed underneath the truck’s bed cover, explained to the neighbor that he was moving. After several tense moments of small talk, the neighbor excused herself to answer a phone call. Henkel finally closed the tailgate and pulled around the front of the house to wait for Elias.

Elias came out carrying a black duffle bag and got into his Audi, which was parked down the street. Henkel followed Elias to his South Side apartment, where Elias dropped off the duffle bag and his car. He got into the pickup and ordered Henkel to start driving toward West Virginia.

Matt Henkel and Craig Elias stopped at Lowe’s Home Improvement store on Routes 22-30 in Robinson. After the two agreed to use separate registers, Elias told Matt to buy chains and quicklinks while he purchased padlocks and charcoal fluid. Surveillance cameras in the Lowe’s captured the two while they made these purchases at approximately 9:40 p.m. on March 22. Then they got back on the road to West Virginia.

During the ride, Matt Henkel asked Elias about Andrew Jones’ final moments. According to Matt Henkel’s testimony, Elias told him that Jones looked at him and said, “Craig, you’re killing me,” to which Elias responded, “I know.”

Jones’ cell phone rang repeatedly during the ride until they tossed it out the window.

Eventually, the two stopped for gas. Henkel got out to pump, and Elias went into the store where he purchased two hoagies and a road map of West Virginia. A gas station employee later identified the two men. When Henkel got back into the truck he heard Elias finish up a cell phone conversation. His parting words were, “It’s burned.” Elias was referring to the Chevy Blazer Jones had arrived in that was found burning in a field in Coulter.

After crossing the state line, the two reached the Market Street Bridge over the Ohio River, and Elias decided to drop Jones’ corpse into the river from there. They waited for traffic to subside and found a secluded area away from the bridge to stop the truck. The two removed the garbage bags from Jones’ body, wrapped it in chains and attached a padlock and the 50-pound weight. They drove onto the bridge where Elias got out and heaved Jones’ body over the railing. But the padlocks snagged on the bars. As the body dangled over the Ohio River, Elias fidgeted with the locks, freeing them from the rail, and watched as the body splashed into the Ohio River below.

According to Matt Henkel’s testimony, he then drove to the Montour Country Club, where he had been an employee. He was also supposed to pick up a friend there that evening. Elias went into the club, showered, changed his clothes, and disposed of the clothes he had been wearing during the events of that day. Next, they took Matt’s friend home from the country club, picked up Jared Lischner and went back to Elias’ South Side apartment. At the apartment, Elias went upstairs with Lischner and another roommate while Matt waited in the living room. After a few moments, Elias came downstairs and handed Matt $1,000 in $20 bills. He told Matt that his brother Jared wanted him to have it. After an hour or so, Matt returned home to find his father and brother waiting. He told them what happened and they agreed to never speak of the incident again.

Meanwhile, Anthony Brownlee, who had been kidnapped and tortured with Andrew Jones, had gone to the Pittsburgh Police in the early hours of March 23, 2002.

One week later on March 29, Matt Henkel came forward to the police with further information about the case. Crews began to drag the Ohio River near Steubenville, but Andrew Jones’ body was not found until April 12.

In October 2003, Elias, Lischner and Jared Henkel paid for their actions. Elias was convicted of first degree murder, while co-conspirators Lischner and Henkel received second-degree murder convictions. According to Pennsylvania law, when defendents are convicted of murder conspiracy, they automatically receive life sentences. The trio officially faced this edict from Judge Jeffrey Manning at their sentencing hearing in January 2004.

Although life sentences were mandated by the state’s sentencing laws, the the judge had received an outpouring of pleas for mercy from friends and family members convinced of their innocence. Most of the 300 letters that arrived in Judge Manning’s office were for Elias. He also received a petition with more than 1,000 signatures requesting leniency.

Dr. Kathleen Roberts, assistant professor of communication at Duquesne, sent a letter of support for Elias, after receiving a two-page handwritten letter from him attached to a typed letter from his family asking for help. Although Roberts remembers Elias as an outstanding student and an anchor in the classroom, she did not write the letter because of those attributes. After reading Elias’ letter, she was convinced that he could still make contributions to society.

“But even though I first felt despair at reading Craig’s letter, I also saw hope in it,” Roberts said. “That he is still reflecting on life and is understanding the experiences of others in a new way – that means he can still do good, can still bring meaning to his life.”

During the hearing, Elias waived his Fifth Amendment right and expressed his remorse to the Jones family. “I can only say that Andy was my friend and not a day goes by that I don’t think about him,” he said.

He also alluded to the senselessness of his crime. “There’s not enough money in any safe in America that’s worth the lives of any one of us.”

Elias’ comments meant little to Andrew Jones’ father, Gary. The elder Jones’ voice, asking for the full extent of the law against the felons, could be heard above those begging for mercy. “[P]lease render a sentence that will end this reign of terror by this trio.”

Before Manning issued their sentences, he expressed his thoughts about the entire case. “This seems surreal, an irrational dream,” he said. “[If it were a dream] I would be waking up and Mr. Jones would still be alive and this was some kind of college prank.” Manning added that the trio’s decent upbringings were incongruent with the reality of what happened. “It is something that could occur among the best and brightest,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

BACK TO THE TOP

The phrase, “You’re doing this because I’m black, right?” sounds almost ridiculous in a post-Civil Rights United States. Could a nation that prides itself on diversity, allow racism to dictate public policy? When it comes to the application of capital punishment in Pennsylvania, it apparently does.

Pennsylvania has 229 death row inmates (as of spring 2004), the fourth-highest number in the United States. Although blacks only make up 11 percent of the state’s population 140 of those inmates, or 61 percent, are African Americans, according to a study conducted by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System. Clearly, the race of the defendant factors into the death penalty equation.

Professor David C. Baldus of the University of Iowa conducted a statistical study and analysis on the correlation between the death penalty and race in Philadelphia, which has 124 convicts on death row, the highest number in the state. He concluded that a defendant’s status as an African American weighed as heavily as an additional aggravating circumstance for black defendants in determining who received the death penalty in Philadelphia. He also found that one-third of blacks on death row would have received life in prison, had they been white and convicted of the same crime. However, more than racism contributes to the disparity between blacks and whites on death row.
The poor quality of public defense affects blacks who face capital charges as well. Traditionally, minorities disproportionately come from the lower socio-economic classes and cannot afford private counsel, which is often times superior in quality. Factors that contribute to this disparity between private and public counsel include: low salaries for public defenders, the lack of support staff within the public defender office, and their inability to track caseloads, but the absence of professional standards and guidelines set forth by the county or state also contributes to the disparity.
Pennsylvania requires no systematic collection of data and/or organization of records within each county, which means it is difficult to track just how heavy the case loads actually are for each public defender.
Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Utah are the only three states that provide no state funding toward indigent defense. In these states, the individual counties are responsible for this type of funding. Statistics from the Pennsylvania Committee on Racial and Gender Bias study show that there are substantial inequities within a county-funded defense program. For example, Allegheny County, which has the second-highest population in the state, only provides a little over $3 per capita for public defense; whereas, Montgomery County, with half of Allegheny County’s population, provides over $6 per capita for public defense. If the defense were state-funded in Pennsylvania, the money could be distributed in proportion to county population, thus providing more funding to the counties that need most assistance.
Because funding is inadequate, many public defenders cannot afford to hire experts for their cases, such as psychiatrists and forensic specialists. According to Nicholas Cafardi, Dean of Law School at Duquesne University and member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias, “The DA and the public defenders are not playing on a level playing field. The DA’s funding is at least double the funding received by public defenders. One way to create more equality is to fund them equally.”
Jury selection practices also contribute to Pennsylvania’s racial imbalance on death row. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee and the Baldus study found that when a jury was primarily composed of whites, the disparity between black and white defendants sentenced to death rose to 16 percent, as opposed to 8 percent when the jury had at least five or more black jurors. Another study analyzed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee, The Capital Jury project, found Pennsylvania had a “white male dominance effect” – the impact of a higher number of white males in juries. They consequently found a higher death-sentencing rate when six or more white males were on juries.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee found that given the current condition of the court system in Pennsylvania, it appears as if it is designed to be unfair for African Americans, especially black males who cannot afford private counsel. Until Pennsylvania adopts state funding for public defense and addresses the systematic racism that occurs during jury selection, it said, blacks convicted of capital crimes will continue to find themselves seated on death row. The lack of organization and standardization within the county-funded system is leading to a loss of accountability within the entire state’s justice system, Cafardi said. Providing more adequate counsel for indigents would help eliminate some of the racial disparities within the justice system and boost its credibility. “A state-funded program would improve equal justice in Pennsylvania,” Cafardi said. “A system like the one we have doesn’t build the community up; it tears it down.”