At a status meeting before Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco last week, Taylor Malcolm Johnson, the attorney for Ronald Weiss, filed a “sealed motion for a stay of court proceedings and evaluation” that would effectively halt the progress toward the November retrial of Weiss in the death more than four decades ago of teenager Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton. The trial is scheduled for jury selection on November 18th.
In 1997, Weiss was convicted of murdering the 16-year-old girl after playing pool with her at her father’s bar in October of 1978. Bruzda’s body was found buried beneath a pile of leaves about six months after her death. A federal judge overturned the verdict in 2018 due to misconduct by the State Attorney General’s office but Weiss upon his release, was immediately arrested and re-charged. He’s been trying to avoid retrial since then but the State Supreme Court has upheld Bianco’s ruling that Weiss’s guilt or innocence and the prosecution’s misconduct are two separate issues.
Judge Bianco’s response to Johnson’s motion is not yet on the record.
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