Thursday, 4:30 PM
Judge denies Pring-Wilson reduced bail
By John R. Ellement, Globe staff
Alexander Pring-Wilson, the former Harvard University graduate student from Colorado, today lost his bid to have more freedom as he waits to be retried for the 2003 stabbing of Michael Colono during a street fight in Cambridge.
Middlesex Superior Court Judge Kenneth Jay Fishman today refused to change the bail conditions, which include $400,000 cash bail and a curfew that Pring-Wilson's defense attorney contended is keeping the 29-year-old man unemployed. Pring-Wilson's curfew allows him out from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.
The judge made his ruling after a brief hearing attended by Pring-Wilson, his family and relatives of Colono, who was 18 years old when the two got into a fight on Western Avenue in Cambridge.
Colono's relatives declined comment afterwards as did Pring-Wilson and his family.
Defense attorney E. Peter Parker said in court and in court papers that Pring-Wilson is putting down roots in Massachusetts. The attorney said his partner of four years, Janice Olmstead, has relocated to Massachusetts and will be working in a public school this fall.
But the attorney also said that Pring-Wilson wanted court approval to travel to his native Colorado where he has not been since he was arrested hours after Colono was stabbed on April 12, 2003.
Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Adrienne Lynch urged Fishman to maintain the bail limits on Pring-Wilson's movements. She noted that a trial date has now been set for Nov. 5 and that prosecutors considered Pring-Wilson to be a flight risk if he is allowed to leave the state.
Pring-Wilson and Colono did not know each other before the fight.
A jury convicted him of manslaughter in 2005, but that conviction was thrown out when the state's highest court changed legal rules and required juries to learn if victims of a fight had a propensity to violence.
Pring-Wilson's defense team did not get that chance during his first trial and he is now waiting for the new trial to be held, the court ruled.
