Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco has granted a motion to delay an evidentiary hearing in the Ronald Weiss murder case retrial. Weiss, whose 1997 conviction in the slaying of 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton was overturned in federal court in 2018, is now 77 years old and remains in custody after being released, then immediately re-arrested when the verdict was vacated seven years ago.
Bruzda’s body was found in 1979, months after she was killed in October of the previous year. Weiss was found guilty in 1997 after state law changed and permitted prosecution witnesses to testify against their spouses, which Weiss’s common law wife did. Federal Judge Mark Hornack overturned the conviction based on prosecutorial misconduct by the state attorney general’s office.
The new date for the evidentiary hearing on Weiss’s competency to stand trial is December 23rd.
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