The retrial of Ronald Weiss for the 1979 murder of Barbara Bruzda is scheduled for an undetermined date, but Weiss is still pursuing an appeal of whether or not the case can be tried. On Friday, prosecutors from the state Attorney General’s office just beat a deadline to file a brief challenging an extension of time Weiss was seeking to prepare his appeal.
The new trial was to begin last October, but Weiss appealed to State Superior Court in March of 2022, contending that Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco was wrong to deny his motion to dismiss the case due to a claim of double jeopardy. Weiss was originally convicted in 1997 but in 2018 federal judge Mark Hornack reversed the conviction because of prosecutorial misconduct by a then-Deputy Attorney General and a state trooper. Bianco ruled that a retrial was not double jeopardy because the prosecution’s misconduct and Weiss’s guilt or innocence were two separate issues.
Superior Court currently lists the case as “awaiting consideration.”
