Both the commonwealth and the defense this week have filed their briefs in the Ronald Weiss case, and after both sides respond to the other’s filing, they will await a ruling by Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco on whether Weiss should be released from custody or may be re-tried for the murder of Barbara Bruzda.
After a status conference on March 29th, Bianco ordered the briefs to be filed.
In 1997 Weiss was convicted of killing the 16-year-old girl on October 23rd, 1978 after playing pool with her in Bruzda’s family’s bar in Tunnelton. Her body was found five months later in a wooded area. Weiss was not convicted until 1997, after a state law had changed and allowed spouses to testify against each other.That made the testimony of Weiss’s common law wife admissible and along with the testimony of two prison inmates who said Weiss admitted killing Bruzda, a jury found him guilty.
But in 2018 federal judge Mark Hornack reversed the conviction because of prosecutorial misconduct by then-Deputy State Attorney General John Scott Robinette and a state trooper, who claimed the inmates were not promised special treatment in exchange for their testimony, when they clearly were.
Before the status conference in March, family members and friends demonstrated outside the county courthouse because of fears that Bianco would dismiss the case, which Judge Hornack ruled could well happen due to the seriousness of Robinette’s misconduct.
The responses to the briefs are due by May 17th, after which Judge Bianco has 30 days to issue a ruling, and then the case will return to State Superior Court for its review.
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