Harvard graduate student accused of slaying takes stand in 2d trial
(AP Photo/Mark Thomson, Pool)
Alexander Pring-Wilson, a former Harvard graduate student, testified today in his second trial in Middlesex Superior Court.
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
CAMBRIDGE -- When Alexander Pring-Wilson took the stand today, the former Harvard graduate student did not reenact the 2003 street fight in which he said he stabbed a teenager to death in self-defense. The jury in Middlesex Superior Court had already watched a video of the dramatic testimony Pring-Wilson gave in his first trial, when he stepped out of the witness box, crouched on one knee, and showed how he used a knife to ward off Michael Colono, 18, and another man.
Instead, Alexander Pring-Wilson used words to describe how he said he reached into his back-right pocket for a knife and poked at his assailants as they pummeled him outside a Cambridge pizza shop.
"I was afraid the men who were beating me would not stop until I was killed," Pring-Wilson testified.
The first jury convicted him of manslaughter in 2004, but a judge ordered a new trial after the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in another case that jurors should be allowed to consider a victim's violent history if it sheds light on a self-defense claim.
In this trial, Pring-Wilson's defense lawyers will be allowed to tell jurors about violence in Colono's past, which includes an incident in 2001 in which he threw money in the face of a cashier at a pizza restaurant, then kicked in the front door and shattered the glass.
Pring-Wilson has always said he stabbed Colono in self defense. Colono's cousin testified during the first trial that Pring-Wilson stabbed Colono repeatedly after Colono made fun of him.
Under cross examination today, Pring-Wilson contradicted the testimony he gave during his first trial and said repeatedly that he had forgotten many details from the fight over the last four years.
There was one point, however, in which he held firm. As in his first trial, Pring-Wilson again testified that he did not remember leaving an incriminating message on a friend's voice mail shortly after the fight in which he admitted having stabbed someone.
Pring-Wilson will continue testifying on Thursday.
