After first scheduling Ronald Weiss’s retrial for the June court term, Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco has granted a motion to delay it, rescheduling jury selection for November 18th.
In 1997, Weiss was convicted of the murder of 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton in October of 1978, but the verdict was overturned by a federal judge in 2018, based on a ruling of prosecutorial misconduct by the state attorney general’s office. Weiss was immediately re-arrested and charged again with the murder and has been fighting to avoid retrial ever since. State Supreme Court has consistently upheld Judge Bianco’s ruling that Weiss’s guilt or innocence and the misconduct of the prosecution during the trial are two separate issues.
The judge has ordered a status conference for August 14th.
