According to a federal court ruling issued two weeks ago, 70-year-old Ronald Weiss is to be released from prison today, but he will not likely hit the streets, as a court order issued yesterday by Judge Thomas Bianco directs the Indiana County Sheriff’s office to pick up Weiss at SCI Fayette County and take him directly to the Indiana County Jail to await further court action.
Weiss has been in prison since his conviction for the 1978 murder of 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton. Her body was found in March of 1979 in Young Township. After years of investigation, Weiss was convicted 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 that Weiss confessed the murder to them were not given preferential treatment in prison, when clearly they were.
Judge Bianco last month rejected a proposed plea deal that would have resulted in Weiss’s release. State prosecutors say they will re-try Weiss, but Judge Hornak said when he ordered Weiss’s release on today’s date that a new trial might be problematic, given the extend of the prosecutorial misconduct and the defense attorney’s probable pursuit of a double jeopardy ruling.
Hornak said that Weiss will be now be subject to “ordinary state court pretrial proceedings.”
