Murder Trial of Grad Student Still Pending

The trial of Alexander Pring-Wilson, a Harvard graduate student charged with first-degree murder in April 2003, has seen a year of motions and delays.

Pring-Wilson, a student at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the time of his arrest, is charged with fatally stabbing 18-year-old Michael D. Colono on April 12, 2003 after an early-morning altercation outside of Pizza Ring, a pizza parlor on Western Avenue.

The trial was originally scheduled for last November, but two pre-trial motions and the withdrawal of the defendant’s attorney slowed the case’s progress.

Just last month, a Middlesex Superior Court judge denied defense motions to change venue and to suppress evidence in the case, which is now scheduled for trial in September.

According to accounts presented in court, Pring-Wilson and Colono engaged in a verbal altercation outside of Pizza Ring, as Pring-Wilson walked by the car in which Colono was seated with two others.

Colono allegedly made a comment about the way Pring-Wilson was walking, and then Pring-Wilson allegedly threw open the door of the car where Colono was sitting. In the altercation that ensued, Colono was stabbed five times with a penknife.

Pring-Wilson, who is currently under house arrest in Somerville, claims he acted in self-defense, but the prosecution argues that his attack on Colono was unwarranted.

Soon after his arrest, Middlesex District Court refused to grant Pring-Wilson bail because his knowledge of foreign languages meant he could pose a flight risk. On May 14, 2003 a Superior Court judge released Pring-Wilson from jail on $400,000 bail.

The case has received national print and television media attention.

Fearing a prejudiced jury in Cambridge, which was home to the slain teenager, the defense filed a motion in February to move the trial to western Massachusetts.

But Judge Charles M. Grabau ruled on May 10 that there was not sufficient evidence that pre-trial media coverage of the case would “prevent the selection of an impartial and unbiased jury.”

Grabau also ruled that Pring-Wilson was not suffering from enough mental and physical trauma to inhibit his ability to make voluntary statements to emergency personnel and his friend around the time of his arrest.

The defense had sought to suppress statements that Pring-Wilson made on the morning of his arrest in which he claimed to be an innocent bystander to the incident.

Pring-Wilson quickly changed his story, admitting he stabbed Colono, but asserting that it was in self-defense.

Court proceedings revealed the contradictory statements by Pring-Wilson that the defense was trying to suppress. The night of his arrest, Pring-Wilson called 911 and told the dispatcher that he was “just a fucking bystander” who had witnessed a stabbing.

According to witnesses called at the pre-trial hearing, Pring-Wilson then told Cambridge Police Department officers on the scene that he had observed a stabbing and that he was trying to “help out.”

The motion to suppress claimed that the early statements “were not knowing, intelligent or voluntary”—as admissibility rules require—because at the time they were made the defendant was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a concussion and intoxication.

“The fact that Pring-Wilson made efforts to exculpate himself by his explanations is probative of the voluntariness of his statements,” Grabau wrote in the ruling.

Grabau wrote that a dime-sized welt on Pring-Wilson’s forehead did not affect his ability to make “knowing and voluntary statements” and that he “refused medical treatment and was able to walk home unassisted.”

Also in May, Pring-Wilson’s attorney, Jeffrey A. Denner, filed to withdraw from the case, citing “irreconcilable differences” and “a breakdown in communication” with the defendant.

The trial is currently scheduled for Sept. 13 and attorney Mark Berthiaume, of Boston, is now representing Pring-Wilson.

—Staff writer Hana R. Alberts can be reached at alberts@fas.harvard.edu.