Just 70 seconds passed between the time Colono cracked a joke about the "sh--faced" college student and the time Pring-Wilson's 4-inch pocket knife fatally sliced into Colono's heart.
Updated Nov. 5, 2007,
11:55 a.m. ET
Though granted new trial, Harvard student far from being cleared
Alexander Pring-Wilson was granted a July 1 release from prison on $400,000
bond.
By Lisa Sweetingham
Court TV
Former Harvard grad student Alexander
Pring-Wilson
will be released from prison Friday. But he's not going home anytime
soon, and with a lengthy appeals process and retrial ahead, he is far from being
home-free.
Pring-Wilson was convicted last year in the stabbing death of a Cambridge,
Mass., teenager. He was granted a new trial Friday by Middlesex Superior Court
Judge Regina Quinlan based on a recent higher court decision that allows
defendants who claim self-defense in murder trials to bring in evidence about
the victim's alleged history of violence.
On Monday, Quinlan ordered the
27-year-old to be released July 1 from Bay State Correctional Center on $400,000
bail. His pending freedom has a few conditions.
The Colorado resident may not leave the state of Massachusetts without the
court's permission; he must surrender
his passport; he will be electronically monitored on house arrest and may
only venture out for attorney or doctor visits;
he must submit to random drug and
alcohol testing; and he must check in weekly with the probation department.
"We're thrilled with having won a new trial and a bail order," defense attorney
E. Peter Parker said. "We're not thrilled with the conditions of his bail."
Prosecutors announced that they intend to appeal the judge's retrial order.
Pring-Wilson
was found guilty in October of voluntary manslaughter for the April 2003 death
of 18-year-old Michael Colono.
The district attorney pushed for
first-degree murder but, after deliberating 21 hours over five days,
jurors voted for the lesser-included offense, saving the Harvard student a life
sentence.
"The power that a white, smart man with money has is quite disturbing. I
understand money is power, but money should not define justice," Colono's sister
said during a tearful statement to the court minutes before the judge handed
down a sentence of six to eight years in prison.
Colono's family did not return calls for comment, but upon learning of the
retrial order, his brother told the Associated Press that they were disappointed
by the judge's decision.
"What bothers me most is that I understand we're starting from scratch," Marcos
Colono said. "We can't change this insult to justice but, you know, we fight
it."
The jury foreperson also expressed her disappointment and said that new evidence
about Colono's violent past would not have affected the panel's decision.
"The piece we kept coming back to is
that Michael was stabbed five times with a pretty big knife in some pretty
significant spots on his body," Carol Neville told
Courttv.com.
"That didn't line up with Alex's saying he was on his knees fighting for his
life."
Another juror, Rob Tolantino agreed. "To me," Tolantino said, "what was
important was that 70 seconds."
Brief, deadly encounter
In the early morning hours of April 12, 2003, Alexander Pring-Wilson and Michael
Colono crossed paths on a rain-slick street in Cambridge.
|
|
Colono was a high school dropout with a graduate equivalency degree and three
arrests by the age of 18. At the time of his death, friends say, he was turning
his life around. The father of a 3-year-old daughter, Colono had a job as a cook
at a restaurant along the Charles River.
Pring-Wilson
was a well-traveled honor student who spoke several languages, planned to
attend law school in Colorado after completing his final year at Harvard, and
had barely a blemish on his record. He was arrested once for streaking — a
college prank. The charges were dismissed.
Michael Colono's mother Ada (third from left) sat in the gallery with family
members during the bond hearing Monday.
During his turn on the stand,
Pring-Wilson
testified that he pulled his blade on
Colono
in self-defense after the teen and his cousin, Samuel Rodriguez, repeatedly beat
him in the head with their fists.
But the jurors didn't buy it.
"I remember that the bloodstains on his pants didn't match up with him being on
his knees," Neville said. "And there was only the one injury to his head."
"Why didn't he scream, shout, yell — do something?" juror
Tolantino
said, adding that the fact that
Pring-Wilson initially lied to
police about his involvement only heightened the appearance of deception. "The
claim was self-defense, but I needed more to really fall in line with that."
Pring-Wilson bested Colono by seven years, 4 inches and 20 pounds. Rodriguez
told jurors that, by the time he got out of the car to come to his cousin's aid,
Colono had already been stabbed five times.
Pring-Wilson said Colono and Rodriguez attacked him first.
pizza incidence
But the defense was not allowed to introduce evidence of Colono's propensity for
violence, including an arrest for malicious destruction of property stemming
from a clash at a pizza restaurant in
2001 when he threw money in the face of a cashier and kicked a front door,
shattering the glass.
According to court documents, Colono also was belligerent with police during a
trespassing incident, and "threatened to have his 'Lion Boys' take the police
'out.'"
The defense was only allowed to read the facts of Colono's 2001 conviction for
possession of a controlled substance to the jury during trial.
Jurors also were told that Rodriguez had three assault and battery convictions
and that police came to his home the night of the murder on a domestic violence
call.
Further evidence of both men's propensity for violence may not have made a
difference in the verdict, however.
"We knew that neither Michael Colono nor Mr. Rodriguez were solid citizens, so I
don't think anything they did would have changed my decision," said Neville.
Pring-Wilson's defense attorney obviously disagrees.
"It's one thing to know Michael and Sammy were hotheaded, and it's another thing
to know the things that Sammy did," Parker said. "I think this evidence was so
important because a jury has to evaluate how Sammy said the fight unfolded — and
what he said doesn't make sense."
Judge reverses herself
Pring-Wilson's retrial order came on the heels of a March 14 Massachusetts
Supreme Court decision on another self-defense murder trial also presided over
by Judge Quinlan.
The defendant in that case, Rhonda Adjutant, was a professional escort who found
herself in a deadly confrontation with a drug-addled client who came after her
with a crowbar when he learned that he was only getting a massage and an hour of
her company for the $175 he had just paid.
Adjutant said she stabbed Stephen Whiting in the neck with the razor from his
cocaine stash in self-defense.
Typically, a victim's history of violent behavior is admissible if the defendant
had knowledge of the victim's character at the time of the confrontation. The
reasoning is that it may support the defendant's claim that she had good reason
to fear for her safety and use a certain degree of force in protecting herself.
But Adjutant, like Pring-Wilson, did not know the victim and Quinlan did not
allow such evidence in either case.
The higher court determined that jurors should have heard about specific acts of
violence in Whiting's past because that could have shed light on who was the
first aggressor the night of his death.
Harvard Law professor Carol
Steiker,
a former public defender who now specializes in criminal procedure, thinks the
higher court's decision was sound but complicated.
"I think people's first reaction in [Pring-Wilson's] case is, of course you'd
want to know about the violent past of the victim," Steiker said. "But they
would also say that you would want to know the same about the defendant."
Shortly after the Adjutant conviction was overturned,
Quinlan acted on her own to set aside
Pring-Wilson's
conviction.
"The defendant Pring-Wilson was deprived of evidence that went directly to the
heart of the case's central dispute," Quinlan wrote in her June 24 decision.
"The court finds that, although the evidence was legally sufficient to warrant
the verdict against the defendant, the integrity of that verdict is suspect
where the jury did not have the benefit of relevant evidence critical to the
issue of whether the defendant was the aggressor or whether he was acting in
self-defense."
A new trial and a new jury may bring a new decision. But with an appeals process
under way, both families must play a tedious waiting game before getting a
second shot at justice.
"My immediate thought when I heard about this," said Neville, "was that I felt
really badly for the families, for this whole thing to be reopened — all the
wounds, all the thoughts, all the memories."
Dowbrigade
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, But It Will Be Blogged
Home | About |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sick Sox SyndromeBe Right BachTown vs. Gown in Murder Trial
Oct 17th, 2004 | Blogging | 2 comments
Seldom
has a situation so dramatically exposed the centuries old Town vs Gown
clash of cultures in Cambridge, Mass as the recently
concluded trial of Harvard grad student Alexander Pring-Wilson for the murder of
Michael
Colono,
an 18-year-old short order cook who lived in the area.
These two iconic individuals approached their fatal encounter
outside the Pizza Ring restaurant in Cambridgeport from opposite sides
of the track. Pring-Wilson
was finishing a Master’s Degree in Russian
and Slavic Languages, he spoke Greek, Russian, Portuguese, and Croatian,
was writing his master’s dissertation on the governments of the former
Yugoslavia. He played football and rugby in prep school and was decided
on a career in law. He had been accepted by several top law schools.
Colono was a high school drop-out with a three-year-old
son and a criminal record. At the time of his death we was on parole
for a 2001 conviction for selling crack cocaine.
The facts of the case are interesting if not unusual. Colono
was sitting in a car with his girlfriend and a cousin, waiting for a
pizza. It
was after midnight, near closing time for the bars nearby when Pring-Wilson
came walking by on a wet April night last year.
Cambridgeport is a funky and somewhat seedy corner of Cambridge,
nestled in a bend in the Charles River near the BU Bridge, one of the
few areas of affordable housing left in the city, which is why it is
popular with students, working class families pizzerias and down-scale
bars.
Drug bar
 |
|
The basic facts are uncontested. Pring-Wilson, according
to reports at the time, was wearing a shiny yellow rain slicker and flip-flops.
The homeboy yelled something from the
backseat of the car in reference
to the grad student’s unusual garb. The student responded with some variation
of "You talkin’
to me?" A confrontation ensued.
The occupants of the car got out. Verbal abuse escalated
into physical conflict. Aided by his cousin, the eventual victim was
getting the better of the contest when the beleaguered grad student whipped
out a three-inch folding knife he carried in his right front pocket.
Colono was stabbed five time, once in the heart,
The victim might have lived had he been taken directly
to a hospital (there are at least 3 in Cambridge), but he died while
his friends drove him across the river and around in circles, lost in
the streets of Boston. Pring-Wilson
called the police and reported he
had
witnessed
a fight,
but hadn’t been involved.
Public opinion on the case was as sharply divided as the
contrast between these two young men. Colono’s family and community lauded
him as a promising young man with a troubled past who was finally getting
it together. They feared the system
would naturally favor the scion
of wealth and privilege, to the point of letting him get away with murder.
Supporters of
Pring-Wilson,
including most of the Harvard
community, saw a clear cut case of self-defense. Many, in fact, said
privately that Pring-Wilson
had done the community a service by removing
a dangerous
thug and drug dealer from the mean streets of Cambridge.
So it came as no surprise that both sides were outraged
at the verdict last week - guilty of manslaughter, 8 to 10 years in prison.
The townies say it was cold-blooded murder and the kid got off light
because of Harvard connections. Pring-Wilson’s parents (both lawyers
and, one would suppose, one Pring and the other Wilson) vow to appeal
the verdict, although on what grounds is far from clear.
Now, despite its inherent drama and socio-cultural implications,
this story has a more personal significance to the Dowbrigade, as at
one point during our long-ago undergraduate career we live right across
the street from the Western Front, and around the corner from Pizza
Ring, which at that time was the Western Ave Laundromat.
wetern front bar
Even then the Western Front was a shady
crossroads of roots
rock reggae and underground distribution of all sorts of Caribbean products. We
weren’t regulars, but would often stop by for a quiet drink at the bar,
if they were still open at the hour we returned to our apartment at 172
Putnam Ave. We were usually the only white folk in the place.
The laundromat on Western that is now Pizza Ring is actually
where we washed our clothes that long-ago season, until one warm summer
night when we were collecting our last dryer load shortly before 11 pm
closing time. Other than the Dowbrigade, the place was deserted. Just
as we were folding our psychedelic wood-grain corduroy pants, seven
large
and lively
local teenagers
burst
into the laundry.
Not being the quickest tick on the dog’s tail at the best
of times, the first inkling we had that these individuals were not there
to check their dryer sheets was when three of them grabbed me from each
side and forced me to the floor of the laundry. We felt frantic hands
going through our pockets and removing the $17 plus change we happened
to be carrying at the time.
Unlike Pring-Wilson thirty years later on virtually the
same spot, we knew enough not to fight back. Survival instinct combined
naturally with our innate cowardice and we almost smiled at our assailants
in an attempt to appear cooperative.
The whole thing was over in seconds. As we lay, stunned,
on the laundry floor and the gang headed out the door with their booty,
one of the youths noticed the plastic baggie that had half fallen from
our Hawaiian shirt’s breast pocket.
"Lookie, man! He got PEELS! He got LOTSA peels!"
"Shuddup, man, an’ get otta there!"
But he grabbed the blue-and-white capsules on his way out
the door, which if memory serves were something called "Soapers", a sort
of chemical martini-in-a-capsule, guaranteed to loosen up the inhibited
school marm
and chase the inhibitions away from the most paranoid compulsive. We
gave them up later that same summer, after waking up and finding a set
of fishnet stockings and a dead kitten in our apartment, with no memory
of how either had gotten there.
Following the mugging, we gathered up our laundry, dumped
it on our bed, and borrowed ten bucks form Big Jim our roommate, and
headed across the street for a couple of shots of whiskey to calm the
nerves.
When the bartender asked about the torn brest pocket on our Hawaiian
shirt, we told him our pet chimpanzee had ripped it grabbing for a banana
life saver.
For a couple of weeks we kept a half-hearted eye on the
neighborhood street-dealing scene, half expecting the blue-and-white
capsules to show up, or for one of the punks to show the obvious effects
of powerful
muscle relaxant intoxication, but the way those kids staggered around
on a regular basis it was impossible to tell.
So what are the morals of this little vignette? First,
that for all of its intellectual veneer, Cambridge has always had a
tough, gritty underbelly that can eat up a grad student and spit out
pits so tiny no one will ever know what happened, and so one must be
aware at all times of exactly where one is. In addition, if attacked,
run away. Should
this prove impossible, go limp, roll up into a ball, or piss your pants,
but DON’T
FIGHT BACK. Finally, if you are
determined to go to a dangerous, hard-core
roots Reggae roadhouse, don’t dress like a dork.
article on the verdict from the Boston Globe
article about the case from the Harvard Crimson
second trial
Alexander Pring-Wilson will be allowed to return to his home state of
Colorado, a judge ruled today after
declaring a mistrial.
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
CAMBRIDGE -- A judge granted a mistrial this afternoon in the second trial of a
former Harvard graduate student accused of manslaughter in the killing of a
teenager after a jury deliberated 10
days without reaching a verdict.
The jury came back in a Middlesex Superior Court this afternoon and told the
judge they were hopelessly deadlocked in the case of Alexander Pring-Wilson, 29.
He was accused of manslaughter in the stabbing death of Michael Colono, 18,
during a drunken, late-night fight on a Cambridge street on April 12, 2003.
The jury gave a note to Judge
Christopher Muse that said they were "still deadlocked and do not believe
we can come to a unanimous decision."
Pring-Wilson was convicted of manslaughter in 2004, but he won a new trial when
the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled that jurors should have learned about
Colono's criminal history, which included an alleged propensity for violence.
Pring-Wilson has long maintained that he pulled a knife from his back pocket and
stabbed Colono in self-defense.
The encounter brought together young men from two different worlds: Colono was a
hotel cook and father, while Pring-Wilson,
who is from Colorado Springs, Colo., was studying for his master's in Russian
and Eurasian studies.
Colono's mother and sister left the courtroom with tears in their eyes and did
not speak to reporters.
"We will honor the memory of Michael Colono by continuing to fight for justice
on behalf of him, his family, and the Commonwealth," Middlesex District Attorney
Gerard T. Leone Jr. said in a statement. "We fully intend to retry this case."
At the request of the defense, the judge allowed Pring-Wilson to go back to
Colorado from Dec. 23 to 29. It will be the first time he has returned to his
home state since the stabbing because his bail had prohibited him from leaving
Massachusetts. Pring-Wilson left the courtroom without comment. His mother,
Cynthia Pring, also refused to speak to reporters.
“No,” Pring said. “We got another trial.”
Defense attorney E. Peter Parker said his client is ready. "Everybody is in this
for the long haul," Parker said. "We are ready to do it until we can walk him
out of here once and for all."
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — With tears streaming down his face, a burly 22-year-old
bouncer told jurors Tuesday about the last moments of his cousin's life — while
simultaneously giving murder defendant Alexander Pring-Wilson long and angry
stares from across the room.
"He just wasn't responding to me," Samuel Rodriguez said about 18-year-old
stabbing victim Michael Colono.
"He was struggling for breath," he told
jurors. "I put my arms under his arms and lifted him out of the car. I carried
him to the sidewalk. I kept asking him to stay with me, to breathe. I kept
telling him that it wasn't his time."
Pring-Wilson,
who is charged with first-degree murder for stabbing
Colono
five times with a utility knife, did not appear to avert his eyes as the witness
stared him down. The tension in the courtroom was palpable.
Story continues
advertisement
The 26-year-old Harvard grad student faces life in prison if convicted.
He claims he used his knife, a three-inch folding blade, in self-defense after
being repeatedly punched and kicked by Colono and Rodriguez.
The street brawl began at about 1:45 a.m. on April 12, 2003, outside a pizza
shop the defendant passed while walking home alone after spending the evening
drinking and listening to reggae music with friends.
Rodriguez said Pring-Wilson was the one who challenged Colono to a fight after
hearing them laughing over the teen's remark about the "sh-- faced dude" who was
stumbling down the street.
He said Pring-Wilson
opened the backseat driver's-side door where
Colono
was sitting and that the two appeared to struggle briefly on the street before
Rodriguez came to his cousin's aid.
"I hit the left side of his head,"
Rodriguez said. "It seemed like it had no effect on him."
He told jurors he pulled Pring-Wilson down to the ground by his jacket. After
learning from Colono that the defendant had a knife, Rodriguez backed up a step
and said, "You want a piece of me?"
Pring-Wilson said, "Yes," but did not move, Rodriguez testified.
He said the two men scrambled back into
the car — where Rodriguez's girlfriend, Giselle
Abreu,
was waiting — and sped off.
They didn't realize then that
Colono was quietly bleeding to
death in the back seat.
Perhaps in response to the obvious hatred Rodriguez had for Pring-Wilson, a
court officer switched his position in the courtroom after lunch Tuesday, and
stood behind the witness during the remainder of his testimony.
During cross-examination, defense attorney E. Peter Parker set out to discredit
Rodriguez's account of who instigated the fight that night.
"It was you who threw the first punch, isn't that right?" Parker asked.
"No," Rodriguez calmly replied.
Parker also questioned Rodriguez about three assault-and-battery charges he was
convicted of before his cousin's stabbing, as well as a conviction for carrying
an unlicensed firearm.
Rodriguez appeared tired and spoke quietly as he testified that he had pleaded
guilty to each charge.
The defense has argued that Rodriguez and Colono, who at the time was on
probation for a drug charge, were the aggressors that night and repeatedly
punched and kicked the student before he pulled the knife out of his pocket.
Changing stories
Abreu's recounting of events came under fire when she admitted under
cross-examination Tuesday morning that she initially gave false testimony to a
grand jury about details surrounding the incident.
Abreu claims that she never got out of the car during the altercation.
Defense attorney Rick Levinson,
however, pointed out that Abreu stated, "We got in the car," and used "we"
several times when describing the fight to a grand jury in April 2003.
"I didn't mean to say 'we,'" Abreu told jurors Tuesday. "I meant to say 'Sammy
and Michael.'"
Levinson also pointed out that although Abreu testified Monday that the two
cousins had been drinking beer and brandy in the car, she told the grand jury no
one drank anything that night.
Levinson said she also lied about the domestic dispute between her and Rodriguez
that brought police to their home earlier that evening.
No one was charged, and the couple maintains it was simply a loud argument. But
Abreu initially testified that the couple was late picking up Colono for a night
out because she had been napping.
Time difference
Levinson used a marker to draw up a time chart based on Abreu's testimony and
instructed her to initial and date it.
Abreu said the couple left Colono's house at about 12:35 a.m. and arrived at the
take-out pizzeria, where they ordered a pizza, at about 12:40 a.m. They decided
to wait in their car for the pie, which Abreu said would have taken about 15
minutes to be ready, or roughly at 12:55 a.m.
According to Abreu, however, they never got their pie because they drove away
after the fight.
But while the state maintains that
Pring-Wilson
was in the area at about 1:45 a.m., something his cell phone records reportedly
corroborate, that leaves almost a one-hour discrepancy that seems to put the
witnesses' testimony into question.
The defense may try to assert that they were simply loitering, drinking and
looking for trouble when Pring-Wilson walked by.
On redirect, Abreu told assistant state attorney Adrienne Lynch that the times
she gave were approximations, and that she could not be sure of the exact timing
of the group's movements that evening.
Alexander Pring-Wilson's first-degree murder trial, which is expected to last
two to three weeks, is being broadcast live by Court TV.
E-mail | Print
Prosecutors want to send student back to jail
posted by Dan Boniface Web Producer
Created: 1/1/2007 3:40 PM MST - Updated:
1/1/2007 3:40 PM MST
ADVERTISEMENT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Prosecutors this week hope to convince the state's
highest court to send a former Harvard graduate student back to prison for the
fatal stabbing of a teenage cook, arguing
a judge who threw out his manslaughter
conviction abused her power.
In a hearing before the Supreme Judicial Court scheduled for Tuesday, Middlesex
prosecutors will try to reinstate the conviction of Alexander Pring-Wilson, 28,
of Colorado Springs, Colo., for the 2003 killing of Michael Colono, 18, of
Cambridge.
A jury convicted Pring-Wilson of the killing in October 2004, and he was
sentenced to six- to eight-years in prison.
However, in June 2005, Superior Court
Judge Regina Quinlan set aside his conviction, ordered a new trial and released
Pring-Wilson
on $400,000 bail.
Quinlan cited an SJC decision issued five months after Pring-Wilson was
convicted which said juries may consider a victim's violent history if the
evidence sheds light on whether the defendant was acting in self-defense. The
judge ruled that Pring-Wilson's defense attorneys should have been allowed to
introduce evidence of Colono's allegedly violent past because it could have
bolstered Pring-Wilson's
claim of self-defense.
Pring-Wilson claimed he stabbed Colono in self defense in April 2003 after the
teenager and his cousin, Samuel Rodriguez, beat him relentlessly on a Cambridge
street after a brief verbal altercation.
Rodriguez and his girlfriend testified that Pring-Wilson was the aggressor,
stabbing Colono after Colono ridiculed him as he stumbled drunkenly along the
rain-slicked street.
In papers filed for the appeal, prosecutors say Pring-Wilson's use of deadly
force was not justified because he did not know Colono or his cousin before the
deadly confrontation and Colono and Rodriguez were unarmed.
Pring-Wilson also failed to prove he had reasonable fear of serious harm or
death, or a reasonable belief that the only way to stop the fight was to stab
the teenage father of one, Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Marguerite
Grant said in court papers.
Prosecutors also argue in court papers that Pring-Wilson's attempt to introduce
evidence on Colono's and Rodriguez's allegedly violent past is intended to
attack the credibility of Rodriguez, a key prosecution witness, and "is not
ordinarily grounds for a new trial."
However, Pring-Wilson's lawyers urged the court to dismiss the appeal and allow
the new trial.
Quinlan's decision to order a new trial was justified because her previous
decision to exclude evidence of Colono and his cousin's violent history deprived
the jury of critical information, defense lawyers said in court papers.
Colono's three juvenile arrests suggest that he had a problem with alcohol, an
explosive temper when under the influence and was prone to aggressive and
violent outbursts, defense lawyers said, referring to witness and police
testimony that Colono and his cousin were drinking prior to the fight.
"The jury was greatly hampered by the trial court's exclusion of voluminous
evidence demonstrating that Rodriguez and Colono had a long history of resorting
to violence, including numerous incidents where they were unquestionably the
aggressors," defense lawyers argued.
Pring-Wilson,
the son of two attorneys and fluent in five languages, was pursuing a master's
degree in Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard and planned to go to law
school.
Full coverage
Jew_attacked
Prosecutors say the defendant approached the car in which Colono was sitting, opened the teen's door and challenged him to a fight, with his blade at the ready, because he was angry that the teen was laughing at him.
TV SHOWS
PHOTOS
VIDEO
CHAT
EXTRA
13TH JUROR
STORE Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 Newsletters
Updated Nov. 5, 2007, 11:55 a.m.
ET
Former Harvard student's
manslaughter conviction tossed
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Just days ago a Harvard graduate student had more than
five years to serve before he'd be eligible for parole for the
slaying of a teenager during a
street fight.
Now, Alexander Pring-Wilson could be freed to await a new trial after a judge
vacated his manslaughter conviction in the death of 18-year-old Michael Colono.
retrial
 |
Superior Court Judge Regina Quinlan
ruled Friday that Pring-Wilson,
27, must be tried again because a recent change in state law allows juries to
consider a victim's violent history in self-defense cases. A bail hearing is
scheduled for Monday. |
Pring-Wilson, who was studying for his master's degree in Russian and Eurasian
studies, and Colono, a high school dropout, fought in the early morning hours of
April 12, 2003, outside a Cambridge pizza shop.
Pring-Wilson was walking home when Colono made a comment about Pring-Wilson's
drunken state. Prosecutors said Pring-Wilson approached Colono's vehicle, and
sparked a fight. The defense claimed the student tried to walk away, but Colono
and his cousin got out of their car and attacked him.
A Superior Court jury convicted Pring-Wilson in October and Quinlan sentenced
him to six to eight years in prison.
But in March, the Supreme Judicial Court
ruled in a separate case that juries should be allowed to hear evidence of a
victim's violent past in self-defense cases.
Quinlan then heard motions from
Pring-Wilson's
lawyers, who argued that they deserved a new trial because they were not
permitted to introduce evidence about the allegedly violent past of
Colono
and his cousin, Samuel Rodriguez.
Pring-Wilson Takes the Stand
Friends testify on behalf of defendant; describe former grad student as
‘peaceful’
Published On Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:56 AM
By LINGBO LI and VIDYA B. VISWANATHAN
Contributing Writers
ARTICLE TOOLS:
E-mail this Article
Printer Friendly Version
Write a Letter to the Editor
Assistant District Attorney Adrienne C. Lynch paced in front the witness stand,
arms crossed, unruly white and gray hair spread over the shoulders of her
charcoal suit. Her voice, clear and insistent, carried to every corner of the
small courtroom during her cross examination of Alexander Pring-Wilson.
Pring-Wilson,
a former Harvard graduate student charged with the April 12, 2003
manslaughter of Cambridge resident Michael D. Colono, remained composed as Lynch
grilled him on the details of the night when a chance encounter between Pring-Wilson
and Colono ended in Colono’s death. He cut a calm and unassuming figure in an
olive suit with a dark purple tie, the tenor of his voice never changing, even
as his testimony moved into his conduct during the stabbing.
2005_retrial
In 2005, a Middlesex Superior Court
judge granted Pring-Wilson
a retrial, after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that
evidence about a victim’s violent past could be used at trial. That decision
invalidated Pring-Wilson’s earlier conviction.
Before Pring-Wilson’s testimony, the defense called character witnesses who
vouched for the defendant’s “peaceful” reputation In the midst of one witness’s
testimony, a power outage occurred, halting proceedings for an hour and trapping
some people in the courthouse elevator. Proceedings resumed by 11 a.m.
At the beginning of the afternoon session, defense attorney E. Peter Parker
questioned his client briefly. When asked multiple times why he lied in his
initial reports to police, Pring-Wilson
said, “It was my impression at the time that I was the only victim...I just
wanted to go home.”
He added that he only found out someone had died at the police station later
that morning.
When Lynch took the floor, she tried to nail down Pring-Wilson’s physical
position during the stabbing, which culminated in his asking her in exasperation
to demonstrate a crouching position referred to in her questions.
Some of Pring-Wilson’s answers were qualified with statements of “I guess” or “I
don’t remember,” with “jumbled” memories and the passage of time blamed for
uncertain recollections.
“I’m not asking you to guess,” Lynch said at one point.
Pring-Wilson
maintained that he did not know
Colono had been badly injured
after the stabbing and that he himself had sustained serious head injuries after
being beaten by Colono
and Colono’s
cousin, Samuel E. Rodriguez.
Lynch also questioned the defendant
about his drinking that night.
“I had a fair amount,” Pring-Wilson
said,
Pring-Wilson claims that the altercation between Colono and himself originated
from comments Colono made about Pring-Wilson’s drunken appearance.
“It didn’t make me angry, it made me a little scared,” he said of Colono’s
taunts.
Earlier, Brent Drake, a college friend of Pring-Wilson’s, and Philip Najm, a
former rugby teammate, testified as character witnesses for the defense. Drake
said that Pring-Wilson’s “peacefulness” never changed while intoxicated.
Najm agreed that “when he was intoxicated, he was never incoherent, agitated, or
violent,”
Lynch brought up Pring-Wilson’s conflicting accounts to police about the
stabbing and about his own injuries.
lie_to_police
“I know that I made up a story. I lied
to them,” the defendant said. He said he could not remember leaving a voicemail
for then-girlfriend Jennifer Hansen telling her he had stabbed someone and not
to report it to the police. He also said he could not remember making his
initial 911 call claiming that he had been a bystander in a stabbing.
During earlier character testimony, Colin Vlount, Pring-Wilson’s cousin, said
that “Xander has a reputation for being kind, generous, peaceful—he’s a good
individual.”
Vlount added that as early as the age of nine or ten, Pring-Wilson carried a
pocket knife when growing up, but that was “pretty normal” in his home state of
Colorado.
Dhanpat Rai—a cashier at the pizzeria outside of which Pring-Wilson stabbed
Colono—answered questions about Colono’s behavior around 3:30 a.m., just before
the stabbing.
“He refused to leave and he was acting violent,” Rai said, adding that Colono
was using profane language and appeared to be intoxicated. Police were called,
but Colono left before they arrived.
In her cross-examination, Lynch brought up that it was not unusual for
intoxicated people to frequent the restaurant late at night and that Colono
“never physically touched” Rai.
A former Harvard grad student on trial for the stabbing death of an
18-year-old Cambridge cook took the stand in his own defense yesterday.
Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Adrienne Lynch barraged Alexander Pring-Wilson
with questions about admitted lies and inconsistencies regarding April 12, 2003
- when Pring-Wilson claims he wielded his knife in self-defense against two
attackers.
According to Lynch, Pring-Wilson and Michael Colono brawled in the early morning
hours near Central Square. Lynch said Pring-Wilson hauled Colono's jacket over
his head and stabbed him five times in the abdomen and chest.
Pring-Wilson was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 2004. Defense attorney
E. Peter Parker earned Pring-Wilson a new trial when a Supreme Judicial Court
justice ruled new evidence about Colono and his associates could be introduced.
Lynch asked Pring-Wilson if he knew a man was stabbed April 12. He said he did
not.
Lynch repeatedly referenced 911 call
transcripts in which Pring-Wilson
claimed to a police dispatcher he witnessed the stabbing of a young man in a
black jacket.
Earlier, Pring-Wilson told Parker he could tell he made contact with something
when he thrust up and out with his blade during the fight.
Defense witnesses
Defense attorney E. Peter Parker spent time yesterday building a case for
defendant Alexander Pring-Wilson as a "peaceful" man with friends who knew him
for that reputation.
Mistrial Declared for Harvard Student - Dec 12.2007
By DENISE LAVOIE – 3 hours ago
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A judge declared a mistrial Friday in the case of a
former Harvard graduate student accused of stabbing a teenager to death during a
fight.
After 10 days of deliberations, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the
manslaughter charges against Alexander Pring-Wilson, 29, who was
being tried for a second time.
Pring-Wilson
said he acted in self-defense after he was attacked by 18-year-old Michael
Colono
and his cousin, Samuel Rodriguez, outside a Cambridge pizza parlor as he walked
home from a bar on April 12, 2003.
Rodriguez testified that Pring-Wilson became enraged when Colono ridiculed him
for stumbling home drunk.
The case attracted widespread media attention because of long-standing tensions
between Ivy Leaguers and working-class Cambridge residents.
Pring-Wilson, the son of Colorado lawyers, was studying for his master's degree
in Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard. Colono, a high school dropout, had
fathered a child at 15. He had earned his high-school equivalency diploma and
was working as a cook at a Boston hotel when he was killed.
Pring-Wilson will remain free on bail. Prosecutors said they will put him on
trial a third time.
"We will honor the memory of Michael Colono by continuing to fight for justice
on behalf of him, his family, and the commonwealth," Middlesex District Attorney
Gerry Leone said in a statement.
Pring-Wilson
was convicted of manslaughter in 2004, but won a new trial eight months later
when the state's highest court ruled in another case that juries should be
allowed to consider a victim's violent history if it is relevant to a claim of
self-defense.
During the second trial, jurors were given details about Colono's criminal
record, including a 2001 episode in which he threw money in the face of a
cashier at a pizza restaurant, then kicked in the front door and shattered the
glass.
Pring-Wilson testified Colono and Rodriguez both pounded him relentlessly in the
head, and he pulled out his folding knife because he was afraid they would kill
him.
The fight between Pring-Wilson and Colono broke out as Pring-Wilson walked by a
car Rodriguez and Colono were sitting in as they waited for a pizza order. Pring-Wilson
said he approached the car because he heard someone call to him and thought they
needed directions.
But Rodriguez said
Pring-Wilson
pulled open the car door and started the fight after
Colono
ridiculed him. Colono
was stabbed five times in the chest and abdomen.
The prosecution focused on the lies Pring-Wilson acknowledged telling police
during a 911 call he made seconds after the fight ended, and during police
interviews the next morning. He initially said he had witnessed a young man
being stabbed, but described himself as a bystander.
Pring-Wilson's attorney, E. Peter Parker, said the deadlock showed that at least
some jurors rejected the prosecution's claim that Pring-Wilson was the
aggressor.
"We are thrilled that a number of jurors at this trial saw the commonwealth's
case for what it was, and found that Alex's conduct was a justified act of
self-defense," Parker said.
Colono's brother, Marcos, and mother, Ada, did not immediately return a call
seeking comment.