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prosecutor in western new york dropped efforts Tuesday to retry a man whose murder conviction was overturned in the 1993 killing of a woman Buffalo – Just when the new trial was about to begin.
James Pugh, now 63, served 26 years in prison for the death of Deborah Mendel, a 33-year-old nursing student and mother of two who was stabbed dozens of times and strangled inside her home in Tonawanda. He was granted parole in 2019 and a judge ordered a new trial in the case in 2023.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin Tuesday when Erie County prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss the charges, acknowledging they could no longer meet the burden of proof because of “our inability to present the same evidence considered admissible at the original trial and the unavailability of key witnesses more than 30 years later.” The judge approved the request.
However, prosecutors said they are continuing the case against co-defendant Brian Scott Lorenz, who faces a second retrial in April after the first trial in October was declared a mistrial.
Judge Paul Wojtaszek, who dismissed the case against Pugh on Tuesday, ordered a new trial for both men in 2023 after the new trials. dna At the crime scene, including the knife used in the attack. The judge also said that prosecutors withheld some evidence that could have helped the defense.
District Attorney Michael Keane Meindl’s family agreed with the decision to drop the case against Pugh, which “was not made lightly.”
Lisa Mendel Payne, who was 7 when her mother was killed, hugged Pugh in court Tuesday and said her family is seeking justice for her mother.
She told Wojtaszek in court that although she could not say definitively whether Pugh was guilty or innocent, she acknowledged the lack of evidence and other weaknesses in the prosecution’s case.
“The justice system failed my mother,” he said. “I have always only sought the truth. I believe in the justice system, but I have 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 now does painting and other contractor work, said he is not satisfied with the final outcome of the case against him.
“As Lisa said, there is no justice here for 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 bring it to us. They failed. They failed Lisa. They failed me. They failed Lisa’s sister. Most of all they failed Deborah Mandel.”
Deborah Meindl’s husband, Donald Meindl, was initially a suspect in the death but was never charged. He died in 2023. At the time of the murder, his wife had a $50,000 life insurance policy and was having an affair with a 17-year-old employee at the Taco Bell he managed, authorities said.
Police Lorenz and Pugh began investigating on the theory that they had murdered Deborah Mendel during a home burglary. He was charged when Lorenz, who was under arrest for another crime in Iowa at the time, confessed to killing Meindl and implicated Pugh. Lorenz later said that this was a false confession.
In 2021, then-District Attorney John J. Flynn appointed two prosecutors from his office to review the case.
Their surprising conclusion: that the real killer was Richard Matt, a convicted murderer who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York in 2015 and was fatally shot by a federal agent. Prison Break was the subject of a 2018 Showtime series.
David Sweat, the other fugitive, told authorities that Matt had confessed to him that he had murdered Deborah Mandel.
Both Flynn and Wojtaszek rejected that theory.
In an interview Tuesday, Zachary Margulies-Onuma, one of Pugh’s attorneys, said he was urging the district attorney’s office to re-examine the case. The DA’s office declined to comment on that request.