Success Should Not Matter in Murder Case

To the editors:

It must be hard for friends and family of Alexander Pring-Wilson to see him on trial for murder. By most accounts the Harvard grad student is an upstanding citizen and in the words of the case’s judge “an extraordinary individual” ( News, “Grad Student Denied Bail,” April 18 ). Certainly he stabbed a local man several times as an act of self defense or at least as a drunken mistake.

Now imagine if you can what it must feel like to be the family and friends of Michael Colono, the 18-year-old Cambridge victim. Instead of reading newspaper articles devoted to the death of Michael, you read articles about the academic achievements of the man who stabbed him.

What an insult it must be that acceptance letters to law schools are a key component in the defense. Though Pring-Wilson may be a smart person, even a good person, the tragedy of this case is Michael Colono’s death. Yet Harvard students don’t see it that way.

In the April 18 Crimson article an undergrad decries the judge’s decision to deny Pring-Wilson bail. “The decision was political,” she says. Of course the decision was political. No one can expect the death of a local latino 18-year-old with a GED and a baby daughter to be treated apolitically when the accused man is a white Harvard grad student.

And since it will be a political case, maybe the judge made the right decision in denying bail. Maybe the politics should not swing in favor of the Harvard student this time.

ADA M. MCMAHON ’06

April 24, 2003