Pring-Wilson jury tells judge they are deadlocked

By David Abel
GLOBE STAFF

CAMBRIDGE – A Middlesex jury told a judge this afternoon that they are deadlocked in the manslaughter case against a former Harvard graduate student.

Jurors started deliberating last Monday in the trial of 29-year-old Alexander Pring-Wilson, who is facing his second trial in the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Michael Colono during a Cambridge street fight in April 2003.

Pring-Wilson, of Colorado, said Colono and his cousin Samuel Rodriguez attacked him after Colono badgered him as he was walking home from a night of drinking. He said he acted in self-defense. Prosecutors have argued Pring-Wilson stabbed Colono in the chest and abdomen, after Colono made fun of him for stumbling down the road.

In 2004, the first jury convicted him of manslaughter, 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.

Today, Judge Christopher Muse said he would issue new instructions to the jury tomorrow morning, in an effort to prod jurors to come to a verdict.

"I ask you to leave here with an open mind, and to listen to my instructions and follow it as well as you can," Muse told the jurors.

Corey Welford, a spokesman for the Middlesex district attorney's office, declined to comment.

Attorneys representing Pring-Wilson also declined to comment.

If the jurors remain deadlocked in the coming days, the judge will be forced to declare a mistrial, likely sparking a third trial.

• Comment
• Permalink
• Email