Prosecutors in western New York on Tuesday dropped their efforts to retry a man whose murder conviction was overturned in the 1993 killing of a woman near Buffalo — right as the new trial was set to begin.

James Pugh, now 63, served 26 years in prison in the death of Deborah Meindl, 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 paroled in 2019 and a judge ordered a new trial in the case in 2023.

Jury selection was supposed to begin Tuesday when Erie County prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss the charges, admitting they could no longer meet the burden of proof due to “our inability to present the same evidence deemed admissible in the original trial and the unavailability of critical witnesses more than

See Full Page