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A jury on Friday convicted a man in the 1993 killing of a woman near Buffalo, ending his third trial after a legal odyssey that has stretched on for decades.<\/p>\n
Brian Scott Lorenz, 56, was originally convicted in 1994, along with another man, James Pugh, of murdering Deborah Meindl. The 33-year-old nursing student and mother of two had been stabbed dozens of times and strangled inside her home in Tonawanda that year. Her body was found by her 10-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
Both Lorenz and Pugh denied involvement in the killing. A judge in 2023 ordered new trials for the men,<\/a> after new testing did not find their DNA at the crime scene, including on a knife used in the attack. The judge also said prosecutors withheld some evidence that could have helped the defense.<\/p>\n In December, prosecutors dropped their efforts to retry Pugh<\/a>, just as a new trial was set to begin. They admitted they could no longer meet the burden of proof due to \u201cour inability to present the same evidence deemed admissible in the original trial and the unavailability of critical witnesses more than 30 years later.”<\/p>\n