Pring-Wilson Strikes Plea Bargain

After two trials and nearly five years, Alexander Pring-Wilson has plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and has been sentenced to two years and one day in prison.

Pring-Wilson was a graduate student at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies in 2003 when he stabbed Cambridge resident Michael D. Colono in a fatal chance encounter.

The former Harvard student has already served 290 days since 2003 for a stabbing that he characterized as self defense after Colono's teasing led to a fight.

Pring-Wilson was convicted of manslaughter in October 2004 and sentenced to six to eight years in jail. In 2005, Pring-Wilson was granted a retrial after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that evidence of a victim's violent history could be used in self-defense cases.

That trial resulted in a hung jury last month. Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone had promised to pursue a third trial before the plea bargain was struck.