Murder Trial Enters Second Week

Attorneys in the trial of accused murderer Alexander Pring-Wilson argued yesterday over whether a slashed leather jacket worn by Michael D. Colono on the night he was killed had been tampered with before police saw it.

Pring-Wilson, 26, was a student at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies in April 2003 when he was charged with the first-degree murder of Colono, a local teen.

Pring-Wilson contends that he fatally stabbed the 18-year-old Colono in self-defense after the two had an early morning altercation outside of Pizza Ring, a pizza parlor on Western Ave.

Family and friends of Colono and Pring-Wilson sat on the same bench as lawyers for both sides argued over the terminology to describe the cuts in Colono’s jacket, finally settling on “defects.”

The defense attempted to portray the jacket—as well as the white Chevy that Colono was sitting in right before the fight—as contaminated because neither of the pieces of evidence were immediately taken into the possession of the police.

Prosecution witnesses Ricardo Rodriguez and his wife Elizabeth Rodriguez picked up the car from a local towing company and took it home the morning after the stabbing, with the jacket inside.

Ricardo Rodriguez is a cousin of Colono’s and a brother of Samuel Rodriguez. Samuel Rodriguez was one of the three people—including Colono—in the car the night of the stabbing.

Pring-Wilson’s defense further attempted to undermine last week’s testimony by Samuel Rodriguez and Giselle Abreu—who was also with Colono when Pring-Wilson stabbed him—by asking Colono’s cousin-by-marriage, Elizabeth Rodriguez, whether she was aware that Colono, Abreu and Rodriguez had been out drinking together on the night of the incident. Adrienne Lynch, assistant district attorney, objected.

After sidebar discussion, Cambridge Superior Court Justice Regina Quinlan allowed Elizabeth Rodriguez to answer that she was aware that Abreu regularly consumed alcohol.

The prosecution countered with Ricardo Rodriguez, who testified that his brother, Samuel Rodriguez, and Abreu did not appear intoxicated the night of the murder.

Lynch showed Rodriguez the black leather jacket and chipped away at the defense’s claim that the jacket was contaminated.

“With regard to those defects,” asked Lynch. “You didn’t put them there?” Rodriguez responded that he had not.

The defense relied on an earlier interview with Ricardo Rodriguez to establish that Samuel Rodriguez believed that he and Colono were aggressors on the night of the stabbing.

“Your brother told you he was concerned about getting arrested after the fight?” Kaufman asked. Rodriguez responded affirmatively.

“He told you he sucker-punched [Pring-Wilson] in his temple?” Kaufman asked.

Rodriguez said that his brother told him of the punch, but said nothing about the location of the blow or the defense’s contention that Pring-Wilson was brought to his knees by it.

Defense attorney Kaufman appeared flustered by the inconsistencies between Rodriguez’s statements to defense in May 2003 and his testimony in court yesterday.

Court TV pundit and former prosecutor Andrea Sacco Camacho said neither of the two sides have a noticeable advantage so far in the case.

“The truth is probably somewhere between the two stories,” Camacho said. “Neither story meets the common sense test.”

—Zachary M. Seward contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Robin M. Peguero can be reached at peguero@fas.harvard.edu.