Movement in the trial of Ronald Weiss could be seen today as an evidentiary hearing is on the schedule.
In September, Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco granted a defense motion to employ an expert to assist in determining Weiss’s competency to stand trial. A hearing on the matter was continued in October and again in January.
Weiss is charged with murder in the first degree in connection with the death of 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton in October of 1978. He was found guilty in 1997 but a federal judge overturned the verdict in 2018 due to prosecutorial misconduct by the state attorney general’s office and a state trooper. He was immediately re-arrested and charged with the murder. Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco later ruled that the misconduct and the issue of Weiss’s guilt or innocence were two separate matters, and that the retrial could continue.
