Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco has scheduled a status conference on July 29th for the Ronald Weiss retrial. It’s the first action in the case since February.
Weiss, who will turn 77 years old on July 23rd, was found guilty in 1997 of killing 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton in October of 1978, but the conviction was overturned by a federal judge in 2018 on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct by the state Attorney General’s office and a state trooper who testified against him. Weiss was ordered released but was immediately re-arrested and Judge Bianco subsequently ruled that a retrial was in order because the issue of the defendant’s guilt or innocence and the prosecution’s behavior in the original trial were two different matters.
The State Supreme Court, which had previously ruled against Weiss’s appeal of his conviction, has also upheld Bianco’s retrial decision.
