Post by CCADP on Jul 31, 2005 17:43:07 GMT -5
Weiss Case Unique In Indiana County
By CHAUNCEY ROSS, Gazette Staff Writer July 31, 2005
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An eight-year court fight to reverse a murder conviction and overturn a death sentence resumed Friday in the Indiana County Court, where the lone soul in the courtroom with a link to the area was the man whose fate is at issue.
Ronald Lee Weiss, formerly of the McIntyre and Shelocta areas, was convicted July 9, 1997, of first-degree murder and was sentenced the following day to execution by lethal injection for the slaying of Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton. Weiss, 57, is the only Indiana County resident awaiting execution in Pennsylvania. Weiss' case differs from that of death-row inmates Michael Travaglia and John Lesko. Although the so-called "kill for thrill" murderers confessed that they killed a man in Indiana County in 1980, Lesko and Travaglia received their death sentences in the Westmoreland County Court for the slaying of Apollo police officer Leonard Miller.
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Gov. Mark Schweiker signed a death warrant for Weiss in August 2002, but a federal court stayed the execution and opened the door for Weiss' current appeal.
Barbara Bruzda disappeared Oct. 23, 1978, after she shot pool with Weiss at her father's bar, Joe's Place in Tunnelton, witnesses told police.
Her body was discovered the next spring wrapped in a blanket in the woods along Locust Road in rural Armstrong Township.
Bruzda, 16, had been brutally clubbed to death with a blunt object.
State police in 1985 accused Weiss of the killing, but the district attorney dropped the charges after a judge ruled that testimony by Weiss' common-law wife, Sharon Pearson, could not be used against him.
Investigators arrested Weiss a second time, in February 1997, after a change in the law allowed Pearson's testimony.
Pearson said she cleaned blood out of Weiss' car after Bruzda disappeared and that the blanket found wrapped around Bruzda's body was one that Weiss had kept in his vehicle.
At Weiss' trial, two prison inmates came forward to say Weiss confessed to the killing while in jail.
In his own defense, Weiss testified that he took Bruzda to a residence in McIntyre then was forced off a road by two other vehicles while he was driving Bruzda back to Tunnelton. Weiss told the court the two drivers, whom he identified as his brothers-in-law, beat him and left him unconscious at the side of the road.
When he regained consciousness, Weiss said, Bruzda was gone.
The jury convicted Weiss after hearing two days of testimony then decided on the death penalty after deliberating just two hours.
The defense attorneys now representing Weiss are fighting not just to overturn the death sentence but to get a new trial. They contend, in part, that the jury should have been told that the inmate-informers were given leniency in their cases for their testimony against Weiss.
They also say one of the jurors who condemned Weiss lied when asked whether anyone in his family had been the victim of a violent crime. "Juror No. 3," according to the appeal, became prejudiced against Weiss after trial testimony reminded him of the violent death of his sister.
In the penalty phase of the trial, the jury was told that Weiss previously was convicted of burglaries, and prosecutors added that Weiss threatened his victims - a tactic that the defense now says was "improper, inflammatory and baseless."
The questions are among dozens that Weiss' defenders have raised.
At the hearing Friday, lawyers didn't address the merits of the issues. The time was spent debating whether they should be addressed at all.
The attorney representing the commonwealth argued for dismissal of many parts of Weiss' petition. Either the defense lawyers earlier waived their opportunities to appeal the issues, or the issues were denied in other courts, a deputy attorney general said.
All the FIGURES surrounding Weiss in the saga have changed since his arrest in 1997.
Indiana County Judge W. Parker Ruddock, whose ruling on spousal-immunity virtually blocked Weiss' prosecution in 1985, but who also presided over Weiss' trial 12 years later, has retired.
But Indiana County judges William Martin and Gregory Olson stepped aside when appeals courts sent the Weiss case back to the county court. Martin was the district attorney who first prosecuted Weiss 20 years ago, and Olson was an assistant DA in 1978, when Bruzda was killed.
The state Supreme Court in 2003 assigned Senior Judge Carson Brown, a retired judge of the Clinton County Common Pleas Court in Lock Haven, to oversee proceedings in the Weiss case.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office took over as the lead prosecutor for the Bruzda murder case about two years before Weiss' second arrest. While investigators built their case, Michael Handler, the Indiana County District Attorney in the early 1990s, declared a conflict of interest because one of his assistants, Philip Ursu, had defended Weiss against unrelated charges several years earlier.
Deputy Attorney General Scott Robinette of Pittsburgh handled Weiss' trial in 1997, then another associate state prosecutor, Frank Fina of Harrisburg, took over the case and argued against Weiss' appeal this past January.
In March, Fina was reassigned within the attorney general's office. Deputy Attorney General Christopher Carusone of Harrisburg represented the state at the hearing Friday.
Weiss had court-appointed counselors Robert Dougherty and Donald McKee and Indiana County Public Defender Donald Marsh in his corner for the 1997 trial. Ruddock appointed Indiana attorney Matthew Budash to file Weiss' post-trial appeals.
But after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence in 2001 and after the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania blocked Weiss' execution, the federal defenders' office took up Weiss' case.
Attorneys Stephen Marley and James McHugh Jr. lodged an extensive appeal that has yet to be fully argued in court.
Judge Brown told Marley, McHugh and Carusone on Friday that his schedule won't allow him to render a decision soon. He said the state Supreme Court assigns him to hear cases about 10 days a month and that he spends a lot of time traveling to different counties across the state.
Not only that, he is retired.
"I'll do this as promptly as I can," Brown said. "At some point we'll have to decide about hearing these things on their merits."
Carusone said after the hearing that he hopes the next hearing might be scheduled before the end of the year.
Periodic hearings on the appeal have given Weiss a chance to see different scenery outside the walls of State Correctional Institution Greene near Waynesburg, where he is housed with 173 of Pennsylvania's 221 death-row inmates.
But of the time Weiss has been outside the prison, very little has been spent in the courtroom. A hearing in January in the Indiana County Court finished before noon, and the hearing Friday lasted just 29 minutes.
Weiss spent more time in a courthouse holding cell, talking to his attorneys.
Easily, for most of the time Weiss has been outdoors, he has been under the watch of Indiana County deputies, who escort him from the courthouse and drive him back and forth from SCI Greene.
Weiss declined the Gazette's request for an interview in conjunction with this story.
©Indiana Printing & Publishing Co. 2005
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1078
By CHAUNCEY ROSS, Gazette Staff Writer July 31, 2005
Email to a friend Voice your opinion
An eight-year court fight to reverse a murder conviction and overturn a death sentence resumed Friday in the Indiana County Court, where the lone soul in the courtroom with a link to the area was the man whose fate is at issue.
Ronald Lee Weiss, formerly of the McIntyre and Shelocta areas, was convicted July 9, 1997, of first-degree murder and was sentenced the following day to execution by lethal injection for the slaying of Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton. Weiss, 57, is the only Indiana County resident awaiting execution in Pennsylvania. Weiss' case differs from that of death-row inmates Michael Travaglia and John Lesko. Although the so-called "kill for thrill" murderers confessed that they killed a man in Indiana County in 1980, Lesko and Travaglia received their death sentences in the Westmoreland County Court for the slaying of Apollo police officer Leonard Miller.
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Gov. Mark Schweiker signed a death warrant for Weiss in August 2002, but a federal court stayed the execution and opened the door for Weiss' current appeal.
Barbara Bruzda disappeared Oct. 23, 1978, after she shot pool with Weiss at her father's bar, Joe's Place in Tunnelton, witnesses told police.
Her body was discovered the next spring wrapped in a blanket in the woods along Locust Road in rural Armstrong Township.
Bruzda, 16, had been brutally clubbed to death with a blunt object.
State police in 1985 accused Weiss of the killing, but the district attorney dropped the charges after a judge ruled that testimony by Weiss' common-law wife, Sharon Pearson, could not be used against him.
Investigators arrested Weiss a second time, in February 1997, after a change in the law allowed Pearson's testimony.
Pearson said she cleaned blood out of Weiss' car after Bruzda disappeared and that the blanket found wrapped around Bruzda's body was one that Weiss had kept in his vehicle.
At Weiss' trial, two prison inmates came forward to say Weiss confessed to the killing while in jail.
In his own defense, Weiss testified that he took Bruzda to a residence in McIntyre then was forced off a road by two other vehicles while he was driving Bruzda back to Tunnelton. Weiss told the court the two drivers, whom he identified as his brothers-in-law, beat him and left him unconscious at the side of the road.
When he regained consciousness, Weiss said, Bruzda was gone.
The jury convicted Weiss after hearing two days of testimony then decided on the death penalty after deliberating just two hours.
The defense attorneys now representing Weiss are fighting not just to overturn the death sentence but to get a new trial. They contend, in part, that the jury should have been told that the inmate-informers were given leniency in their cases for their testimony against Weiss.
They also say one of the jurors who condemned Weiss lied when asked whether anyone in his family had been the victim of a violent crime. "Juror No. 3," according to the appeal, became prejudiced against Weiss after trial testimony reminded him of the violent death of his sister.
In the penalty phase of the trial, the jury was told that Weiss previously was convicted of burglaries, and prosecutors added that Weiss threatened his victims - a tactic that the defense now says was "improper, inflammatory and baseless."
The questions are among dozens that Weiss' defenders have raised.
At the hearing Friday, lawyers didn't address the merits of the issues. The time was spent debating whether they should be addressed at all.
The attorney representing the commonwealth argued for dismissal of many parts of Weiss' petition. Either the defense lawyers earlier waived their opportunities to appeal the issues, or the issues were denied in other courts, a deputy attorney general said.
All the FIGURES surrounding Weiss in the saga have changed since his arrest in 1997.
Indiana County Judge W. Parker Ruddock, whose ruling on spousal-immunity virtually blocked Weiss' prosecution in 1985, but who also presided over Weiss' trial 12 years later, has retired.
But Indiana County judges William Martin and Gregory Olson stepped aside when appeals courts sent the Weiss case back to the county court. Martin was the district attorney who first prosecuted Weiss 20 years ago, and Olson was an assistant DA in 1978, when Bruzda was killed.
The state Supreme Court in 2003 assigned Senior Judge Carson Brown, a retired judge of the Clinton County Common Pleas Court in Lock Haven, to oversee proceedings in the Weiss case.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office took over as the lead prosecutor for the Bruzda murder case about two years before Weiss' second arrest. While investigators built their case, Michael Handler, the Indiana County District Attorney in the early 1990s, declared a conflict of interest because one of his assistants, Philip Ursu, had defended Weiss against unrelated charges several years earlier.
Deputy Attorney General Scott Robinette of Pittsburgh handled Weiss' trial in 1997, then another associate state prosecutor, Frank Fina of Harrisburg, took over the case and argued against Weiss' appeal this past January.
In March, Fina was reassigned within the attorney general's office. Deputy Attorney General Christopher Carusone of Harrisburg represented the state at the hearing Friday.
Weiss had court-appointed counselors Robert Dougherty and Donald McKee and Indiana County Public Defender Donald Marsh in his corner for the 1997 trial. Ruddock appointed Indiana attorney Matthew Budash to file Weiss' post-trial appeals.
But after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence in 2001 and after the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania blocked Weiss' execution, the federal defenders' office took up Weiss' case.
Attorneys Stephen Marley and James McHugh Jr. lodged an extensive appeal that has yet to be fully argued in court.
Judge Brown told Marley, McHugh and Carusone on Friday that his schedule won't allow him to render a decision soon. He said the state Supreme Court assigns him to hear cases about 10 days a month and that he spends a lot of time traveling to different counties across the state.
Not only that, he is retired.
"I'll do this as promptly as I can," Brown said. "At some point we'll have to decide about hearing these things on their merits."
Carusone said after the hearing that he hopes the next hearing might be scheduled before the end of the year.
Periodic hearings on the appeal have given Weiss a chance to see different scenery outside the walls of State Correctional Institution Greene near Waynesburg, where he is housed with 173 of Pennsylvania's 221 death-row inmates.
But of the time Weiss has been outside the prison, very little has been spent in the courtroom. A hearing in January in the Indiana County Court finished before noon, and the hearing Friday lasted just 29 minutes.
Weiss spent more time in a courthouse holding cell, talking to his attorneys.
Easily, for most of the time Weiss has been outdoors, he has been under the watch of Indiana County deputies, who escort him from the courthouse and drive him back and forth from SCI Greene.
Weiss declined the Gazette's request for an interview in conjunction with this story.
©Indiana Printing & Publishing Co. 2005
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1078