Pring-Wilson Takes the Stand

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.

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.

“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.