Prosecutors drop effort to retry man whose conviction was overturned in 1993 New York killing
Prosecutors in western New York abandoned efforts Tuesday to retry a man with a murder conviction. overturned Just as a new trial was about to begin in the 1993 murder of a woman near Buffalo.
James Pugh, now 63, spent 26 years in prison for the death of Deborah Meindl, a 33-year-old nursing student and mother of two who was stabbed dozens of times and strangled in her Tonawanda home. He was paroled in 2019, and a judge ordered a new trial in the case in 2023.
Jury selection was supposed to begin Tuesday, with Erie County prosecutors asking a judge to dismiss the charges and acknowledging they could no longer meet the burden of proof because of “our inability to present the same evidence deemed admissible at the first trial and the inability to locate critical witnesses more than 30 years later.” The judge approved the request.
But prosecutors said they were pressing ahead with the case against co-defendant Brian Scott Lorenz, who faces a second retrial in April after a mistrial was declared at the first hearing in October.
Judge Paul Wojtaszek, who dismissed the case against Pugh on Tuesday, ordered new trials for the two men in 2023 after their DNA was not found in new tests at the scene, including the knife used in the attack. The judge also said prosecutors withheld some evidence that could have helped the defense.
District Attorney Michael Keane said he accepted Meindl’s family’s decision to drop the case against Pugh and said it was “not done lightly.”
Lisa Meindl Payne, who was 7 when her mother was killed, hugged Pugh at the courthouse Tuesday and said her family continues to seek justice for her mother.
He told Wojtaszek in court that while he couldn’t say for sure whether Pugh was guilty or innocent, he acknowledged the lack of evidence and other weaknesses in the prosecution’s case.
“The justice system failed my mother,” he said. “I just wanted the truth. I believed in the justice system, but I lost faith in the system. I just want the truth. Why did he have to die that day?”
Meindl Payne’s sister Jessica, who was 10 when she found her mother’s body after coming home from school, died in 2020.
Pugh, who is currently doing painting and other contracting work, said he was not satisfied with the outcome of the lawsuit filed against him.
“As Lisa said, there is no justice here for either her or me,” he said in a statement released by his lawyers. “We both just want the truth, and it’s the prosecutors’ job to get that for us. They failed. They failed Lisa. They failed me. They failed Lisa’s sister. Most importantly, they failed Deborah Meindl.”
Deborah Meindl’s husband, Donald Meindl, was initially a suspect in the death but was never charged. He died in 2023. Authorities said he had a $50,000 life insurance policy on his wife at the time of the murder and was maintaining a relationship with a 17-year-old employee at the Taco Bell he managed.
Police began investigating Lorenz and Pugh on the theory that they killed Deborah Meindl during a home burglary. They were charged after Lorenz, who was later arrested for another crime in Iowa, confessed to killing Meindl and implicating Pugh in the crime. Lorenz later said it was a false confession.
In 2021, then-District Attorney John J. Flynn appointed two prosecutors from his office to review the case.
Surprising results: He is the real murderer Richard MattA convicted murderer who escaped from Clinton Correctional Institution in Dannemora in upstate New York in 2015. was fatally shot by a federal agent. The prison break was the subject of the 2018 Showtime series.
Another fugitive, David Sweat, told authorities that Matt confessed to killing Deborah Meindl.
Both Flynn and Wojtaszek rejected this theory.
In an interview Tuesday, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, one of Pugh’s attorneys, said he was urging the district attorney’s office to reinvestigate the case. The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the request.
