Indiana County Judge Thomas Bianco yesterday denied a motion to dismiss the homicide case against Ronald Weiss and release him. Weiss will remain in the Indiana County Jail for now in a case that will surely be appealed to a higher court.
Attorney Taylor Malcolm Johnson based his motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds. In 1997, the now-70-year-old Weiss was convicted of the murder of 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton in 1978, but the conviction was overturned last year by a federal judge who cited prosecutorial misconduct by the state attorney general’s office. Weiss was ordered released from state prison, but was immediately re-arrested and jailed to await a new trial.
The misconduct, according to U.S. District Court Judge Mark Hornak, was the deliberate misleading of the jury by then-Deputy Attorney General John Scott Robinette and a state police trooper, who claimed that two prison inmates who testified against Weiss were not given preferential treatment in prison…when they clearly were. Hornak wrote in dismissing the case that a retrial would be problematic because of double jeopardy, but Judge Bianco held a hearing in January at which Robinette testified, and the judge subsequently accepted Deputy A.G. Gregory Simatic’s argument that the admissibility of Robinette’s testimony and Weiss’s guilt or innocence are separate issues.
In his order, the judge did not set a date for the next court action.
