Prosecutors drop effort to retry man whose conviction was overturned in 1993 New York killing

Prosecutors in western New York on Tuesday dropped their efforts to retry a man whose murder conviction 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.