Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco has rescheduled an evidentiary hearing for Ronald Weiss for February 18th. The hearing to determine Weiss’s competency to stand trial for murder was originally scheduled in October, on a motion the month before by Weiss’s attorney, Taylor Malcolm Johnson. It was continued then, and then again on December 23rd.
The 77-year-old Weiss is accused of murdering 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda in October of 1978. He was convicted in 1997, but in 2018 a federal judge overturned the verdict on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct by an assistant state attorney general and a state trooper who testified at the trial. Judge Mark Hornak ordered Weiss released but he was immediately re-arrested and charged with the murder again, with Judge Bianco subsequently ruling that the prosecution’s misconduct and Weiss’s guilt or innocence were two separate matters, a finding that was upheld by the State Supreme Court. Five previous attempts at a retrial have been postponed on motions by the defense.
