After falling quiet for a few weeks, there is some movement in the murder case against 70-year-old Ronald Weiss. Judge Thomas Bianco has scheduled a status conference on the case for October 15th.
Weiss has been in prison since his conviction for the 1978 murder of 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton, whose body was not found until March of 1979 in Young Township. After years of investigation, Weiss was found guilty of the murder in 1997, but the conviction was overturned this year when U.S. District Court Judge Mark Hornak ruled that a prosecutor with the state attorney general’s office and a state trooper falsely claimed during the trial that two fellow inmates who testified against Weiss were not given preferential treatment in prison, when clearly they were.
In August, Judge Bianco rejected a proposed plea deal that would have resulted in Weiss’s release. State prosecutors say they will re-try Weiss, but Judge Hornak has said that a new trial might be problematic, given the extent of the prosecutorial misconduct and the defense attorney’s probable pursuit of a double jeopardy ruling.
The status conference October 15th comes at the request of the state.
