The attorney for Ronald Weiss yesterday filed an “application for amendment of interlocutory order”, which essentially would grant him the right to appeal the case before it is finished. Attorney Taylor Malcolm Johnson wants to reverse Judge Thomas Bianco’s ruling this month denying a motion to dismiss the homicide case against Weiss.
Johnson’s original motion to dismiss was based 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. Federal Judge Mark Hornak wrote in dismissing the case that a retrial would be problematic because of double jeopardy, but Judge Bianco accepted Deputy Attorney General Gregory Simatic’s argument that the prosecutorial misconduct and Weiss’s guilt or innocence are separate issues.
There is no date set for further court action.
