Emotions Run High At Murder Trial

A maelstrom of national media descended upon Cambridge last fall, when the court of public opinion portrayed the murder trial of Alexander Pring-Wilson as a case in which a rich, white Harvard graduate student was pitted against a poor, Hispanic local teen.

And this time, it was the Harvard student who was in trouble.

Following three weeks of testimony, emotional outbreaks, and the glare of Court TV cameras, then-26-year-old Pring-Wilson was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in early October for fatally stabbing Michael D. Colono, 18, during an altercation outside of a pizzeria on Western Avenue.

In April of 2003, the defendant had been walking home drunk, clad in shorts and sandals, when Colono, who sat in a parked car, heckled him for being “shitfaced.” After a 70-second brawl, Pring-Wilson struck Colono five times with a three-and-a-half inch Spyderco military knife. One of the blows pierced the victim’s heart.

A tearful Pring-Wilson broke down on the stand this past October, spending nearly a full minute choking back sobs and gasping for breath as the click of camera shutters went off in a flurry.

In the end, the jury of seven men and five women did not buy the defense’s claim that Pring-Wilson was acting in self-defense when he fought off Colono and his cousin, Samuel E. Rodriguez.

“It seemed to most of the jurors too calculated, his story, and a little bit too practiced and rehearsed,” recalls Jury Forewoman Carol D. Neville. “It didn’t ring true and it didn’t line up with the physical evidence.”

Superior Court Judge Regina Quinlan handed Pring-Wilson a six-to-eight year sentence—a reduction from the recommended 8-to-12 years—only two hours after the jury’s verdict, bringing the case to a climactic end.

But a Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) decision five months afterwards has breathed new life into the case that brought Cambridge’s town-gown tension to the fore and to homes nationwide. In a precedent-setting move, the SJC ruled that evidence of a victim’s violent criminal history is admissible in court, and may be relevant, if there is a question of who initiated the scuffle.

Quinlan reconvened the parties last week to discuss whether a retrial is in order, in light of the recent SJC ruling.

Jurors never heard of a police report alleging that on Sept. 15, 2001 Colono ordered food at a local dive and allegedly threw money in the cashier’s face, kicking the door and shattering glass after being asked to leave. And the defense has claimed that the jury was not privy to several assault and battery convictions that Rodriguez had racked up in years prior. This background information could have swayed jurors to believe that Colono and his cousin were the aggressors in the fight.

But former jury member Ceasar L. McDowell, an MIT professor, says this excluded evidence would not have led him to change his mind.

“People on the jury weren’t fooled,” McDowell says. “They didn’t think Michael and his cousin were without problems. We just didn’t think that was the issue.”

Despite being of no consequence within the jury room, the issue of Colono’s troubled past seemed to have caught—and held—the public’s attention.

TWO WORLDS COLLIDE

The paths of Colono, a high-school dropout, and Pring-Wilson, a student at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies, converged the night of the fatal stabbing, setting up a tantalizing back story on which the press capitalized.

Under the heading “riots loom as Harvard murder jury deliberates,” a Sunday Herald reporter based in Mass. predicted that “if Wilson, who is charged with first-degree murder, is acquitted, commentators believe that locals, some of whom already resent the excesses of wealthy Harvard students, will be convinced that the privileged can get away with anything, even murder.”

And although the differences were stark—Pring-Wilson is the son of two prominent attorneys, with an illustrious academic career and aspirations of entering law; Colono was a convicted crack cocaine dealer of Puerto Rican descent who fathered a child at 15—the socioeconomic, racial divide was more media fodder than in-court strategy.

“I don’t believe that Pring-Wilson was punished or rewarded because of his Harvard connections,” said Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree. “Nor do I believe that the jury overvalued or undervalued the victim in this case because of his class or race. In my view, it proved many of the pundits wrong.”

In comparison to media coverage, defense attorneys emphasized Pring-Wilson’s Harvard connection less often—though they mentioned his fluency in five languages and his proficiency at rugby—because of fears that local resentment towards Harvard would bias the jury against Pring-Wilson.

But former juror McDowell says that the jury was careful to avoid biases based on educational or socioeconomic background.

“We really only looked at the facts of the case. The idea that he was a Harvard student didn’t buy him anything,” he says. “One of the things that this jury did was put up a picture of Michael Colono while we were deliberating, so that we would not forget he was a person. So much was done during the trial to make us believe he was not a person.”

THE POWER OF THE PRESS

Court TV picked up the Cambridge trial live, bringing the case into the homes of millions of viewers. The network had originally planned to follow the sexual assault case against basketball star Kobe Bryant but an abrupt dismissal of the case brought Pring-Wilson into the national limelight.

Witness Jennifer Hansen says that the national venue only exaggerated images of her friend’s privileged upbringing.

“He was not born with a silver spoon in mouth,” Hansen says. “He was a work study student on a full scholarship. I think the D.A. took advantage of the fact that it’s nationwide Court TV to try and further her political agenda.”

Hansen, Pring-Wilson’s ex-girlfriend, received a voicemail message from him the night of the incident asking her not to repeat information about the fight to the police. She says she still believes he acted in self defense.

Hansen alleges that it was District Attorney Martha Coakley’s aspiration to run for U.S. Senate—a post she was eyeing if Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) won his bid for the presidency—which led her to overcharge Pring-Wilson with first degree murder.

For the victim’s family, the storyline of an white man receiving preferential treatment over a poor Hispanic was not fantasy.

“I have a lot of anger [at] society’s views and stereotypes of a young Hispanic man,” said Damaris Colono, sister of the victim, to the judge at sentencing. “Just because you’re raised a rich white boy who is smart doesn’t mean you’re not capable of making a stupid decision.”

Although Court TV correspondent Savannah Guthrie admitted then that the “clash between the classes” element of the Pring-Wilson trial had attracted the public’s attention, she was not sure whether the case truly hinged on those issues.

Cambridge Mayor Michael A. Sullivan says that the case’s town-gown component was externally exaggerated by the media and spectators outside of Cambridge. He says he received nearly no calls concerning the case from his constituency.

“I think the class issue got played more by the press than by anyone else. And the defense played into what was going to be a good story,” says Sullivan. “It wasn’t something on the daily consciousness of Cantabrigians. I think it got a lot of play because of the captions that Court TV put on the spin.”

But a judge still sits as the final arbiter of whether to rehash the trial that this year embroiled Cambridge—and the nation—in a spectacle ripe with commplications of class and race.

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