In Indiana County Court, an evidentiary hearing is scheduled on Tuesday to determine the competency to stand trial of 77-year-old Ronald Weiss, who is charged with murdering 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton in October of 1978. Weiss was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison in 1997, but a federal judge overturned the verdict in 2018, on a determination of prosecutorial misconduct by the state attorney general’s office and a state trooper who testified in the trial.
President Judge Thomas Bianco subsequently ruled that the issue of the prosecution’s misconduct and Weiss’s guilt or innocence were two separate matters, and the State Supreme Court upheld that judgment, setting the stage for a retrial. There have been five attempts at a new trial, all of them continued on a variety of defense motions.
The hearing is scheduled on Tuesday.
Also in Indiana County Court, Judge Bianco will conduct a hearing tomorrow on a writ of habeas corpus filed in a drug possession and DUI case involving 39-year-old Brandon Krolick of Cherry Tree, who is currently an inmate at SCI Mercer.
Sentencing is scheduled Monday for 36-year-old Aaron O’Neil of Indiana, on a guilty plea for felony possession with intent to deliver; for 20-year-old Terril Maurice Hall of Harrisburg, an inmate at SCI Pine Grove, on a reduced charge of simple assault; and for 31-year-old Robert Abriola of Trumball, Connecticut, for DUI and reckless endangerment.
