SJC backs retrial in slaying to air self-defense claim

The state's highest court upheld yesterday a judge's controversial ruling that ordered a new trial for Alexander Pring-Wilson, a former Harvard graduate student convicted of fatally stabbing an 18-year-old cook in a fight on a Cambridge street in 2003.

The Supreme Judicial Court agreed with Middlesex Superior Court Judge Regina L. Quinlan that Pring-Wilson should get a new trial because jurors lacked evidence critical to determining whether he was the aggressor or acted in self-defense when he killed Michael Colono. Quinlan overturned the conviction of voluntary manslaughter in 2005.

At the time Pring-Wilson was convicted, Massachusetts was one of only a few states with a provision in its self-defense law that barred a defendant from presenting evidence of a victim's violent past unless he or she knew of the history before the confrontation and feared for his or her safety. Pring-Wilson and Colono were strangers to each other when they crossed paths near a parked car outside a pizza parlor on April 12, 2003, on Western Avenue.

But five months after Pring-Wilson's conviction, the SJC did away with the restriction. That prompted Quinlan, who presided at the high-profile trial in 2004, to revisit her decision to prevent the jury from hearing evidence that both Colono and his cousin Samuel E. Rodriguez, who also was in the fight, had violent criminal histories. In June 2005, Quinlan ruled that as a result of the SJC's action, Pring-Wilson was entitled to present the evidence to another jury. Yesterday, the high court unanimously agreed, and the Middlesex district attorney's office promptly said it will prosecute Pring-Wilson again.

"In this case, the identity of the first aggressor was essential, and the defendant sought aggressively and repeatedly . . . to introduce evidence of Colono and Rodriguez's violent histories to illuminate the matter," Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall wrote for the court. "At each turn, the judge rejected those attempts."

Charles W. Rankin, one of Pring-Wilson's lawyers in the appeal, said the ruling confirmed that Pring-Wilson received a "fundamentally unfair trial" because the jury got only a partial picture of the men he confronted. The ruling, he said, could open the door for the possible overturning of other self-defense cases currently before the state Appeals Court, the SJC, or the US Supreme Court.

Rankin said yesterday morning that he hoped Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. would not bother to retry Pring-Wilson, who has been under house arrest on $400,000 bail in the Marlborough area since he was freed in July 2005.

"Do you think a jury hearing about the violent history of these two people is going to convict Alex?" Rankin said.

However, in vowing to retry Pring-Wilson, Leone said evidence at the first trial showed that the defendant sought to conceal his role in the encounter and initially told a 911 operator and police that he was merely a bystander when the stabbing occurred.

"We will again present the strong evidence that led a jury to convict Pring-Wilson for drawing his knife and killing the unarmed victim, Michael Colono, stabbing him five times in 70 seconds," Leone said in a statement.

Pring-Wilson's father -- Ross A. Wilson, a criminal defense lawyer in Colorado Springs, Colo. -- said in a telephone interview that "with the evidence that can come in, a jury is going to be real hard-pressed to believe that Alex was the perpetrator of what happened."

Colono's 31-year-old brother, Mario Colono, issued a statement from the family last night condemning the decision.

"Everyone that knew Michael knows that he wasn't a violent person and got along with everybody," the statement said. "We expect [Pring-Wilson] to pay and justice to be done."

Anne C. Goldbach, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, hailed yesterday's ruling, saying the SJC had "reaffirmed how important it is for a jury to know all of the facts, especially when the basic right of self-defense is at issue."

The Pring-Wilson case, among the state's most publicized trials in recent years, was viewed by many as a deadly collision between town and gown.

Pring-Wilson, the son of two affluent Colorado lawyers, was pursuing a master's degree in Russian and Eurasian studies and planned to go to law school. Prosecution witnesses testified that Colono, a high-school dropout whose father is a factory worker and whose mother is a homemaker, had insulted him in a chance encounter on the street.

Assistant District Attorney Adrienne C. Lynch told jurors that Colono had ridiculed Pring-Wilson, who, after spending the night bar-hopping, walked by a parked car where Colono, Rodriguez, and Rodriguez's girlfriend sat waiting for a pizza order.

Fuming at the insult, Lynch said, Pring-Wilson opened the car door, and Colono came out swinging. But Pring-Wilson shoved him against a brick wall and repeatedly stabbed him, once in the heart, with a Spyderco military-style folding knife, Lynch said.

Testifying in his own defense, Pring-Wilson said he curled up as Colono and Rodriguez, who were both unarmed, barreled out of the car, knocked him to the ground, and beat him. He said he pulled out the knife only because he feared being pummeled to death.

In his memorandum seeking a new trial in 2005, Rankin said that about 40 witnesses were prepared to testify about the violent pasts of both Colono and Rodriguez if the judge had let them.

Colono's criminal history included convictions for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and for malicious destruction of property, the high court said. The latter stemmed from an incident when he tried to leave a pizzeria without paying, threw money in the face of a cashier, and kicked the restaurant's glass front door, shattering it.

Rodriguez had several convictions for assault and battery and illegal firearm possession and resisting arrest, the SJC said. In the gun case, a police officer chased him in 2001 because he suspected Rodriguez was illegally carrying a firearm. Rodriguez pulled out the loaded .45-caliber gun and briefly struggled with the officer who arrested him, the high court said.

Pring-Wilson had no criminal record.

In Pring-Wilson's trial, the jury spent more than 20 hours dissecting evidence concerning the fight that took place on the Cambridge street. The jury rejected prosecutors' recommendations that he be convicted of first-degree murder and found him guilty of manslaughter. Quinlan sentenced him to six to eight years in prison.

Rankin said he expected that within a few weeks the appellate lawyer will ask for Pring-Wilson's bail conditions to be relaxed.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.