SJC ruling may bring retrial in stabbing
Evidence was blocked in Pring-Wilson case
Alexander Pring-Wilson, the Harvard graduate student found guilty last fall of fatally stabbing a teenage cook in a street fight in Cambridge, could be granted a new trial next month if a Superior Court judge agrees that a recent Supreme Judicial Court decision throws his conviction in doubt.
In an unusual move, Superior Court Judge Regina L. Quinlan, who presided at the high-profile trial, acted on her own accord to schedule an April 12 hearing to determine whether Pring-Wilson's conviction should be thrown out, following an SJC ruling that makes it easier for people accused of murder or assault to argue that they acted in self-defense.
That date is the second anniversary of Michael Colono's slaying. His sister, Wanda Yvette Rivera , said yesterday that reopening the case would be devastating to the family.
Lawyers for Pring-Wilson tried to introduce evidence at trial that Colono and his cousin had a history of violence and that Pring-Wilson had to defend himself. But Quinlan blocked the evidence from being presented, because under state law it was admissible only if the defendant knew the victim had a propensity for violence. Pring-Wilson did not know either man.
The SJC decision means that judges can now let juries consider the violent history of a homicide or assault victim if the evidence sheds light on whether that individual, as opposed to the defendant, started the fight.
In ordering the hearing this week, Quinlan expressed doubts about her ruling on the evidence in the Pring-Wilson trial.
''Although the court views the evidence as legally sufficient to support the verdict returned by the jury, the integrity of the evidence has been rendered suspect as a result of the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court," Quinlan wrote.
Rivera said her family got a call from prosecutors yesterday about the possibility of a new trial.
''I don't think it would be fair for him to have another trial," said Rivera, 31. ''Everything was proven. There wasn't any misconception about Michael at any point during the trial. . . . He had brushes with the law, but he was never, ever charged with a violent crime.
''We've been put through so much already," she added. ''To do it again would be devastating."
But E. Peter Parker, one of Pring-Wilson's three trial lawyers, was buoyed by the order, especially because Quinlan issued it with no prompting from the defense.
''We're very encouraged by this development, and we hope to persuade the court to vacate the conviction and grant a new trial," Parker said.
Pring-Wilson was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and is serving a sentence of six to eight years in state prison.
A spokeswoman for Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley said that prosecutors had no comment, except that they planned to ask the judge to reschedule the hearing.
Quinlan's order suggests that Pring-Wilson's conviction will probably be overturned, according to Andrew Good, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. ''It's likely that Pring-Wilson is going to get a new trial, bottom line," he said.
Although Quinlan might conclude that jurors would still have convicted Pring-Wilson if they had known about Colono's past, Good said, trial judges are loath to substitute their judgment for a jury's in fiercely contested cases in which the criminal charges are so serious.
Good also said the jury's rejection of Assistant District Attorney Adrienne C. Lynch's entreaty that Pring-Wilson be convicted of first- or second-degree murder indicates that ''if it had had the additional evidence, it might have gone the rest of the way and acquitted him."
Pring-Wilson's parents, who live in Colorado, could not be reached for comment.
The conviction that the SJC overturned this month was from a manslaughter case that Quinlan presided over in 2001. Six of the SJC's seven justices ruled that Quinlan should have allowed Rhonda Adjutant, an escort who stabbed Stephen Whiting to death in Revere in 1999, to introduce evidence during the trial illustrating Whiting's violent past.
Before the SJC ruling, Massachusetts was one of a few states that let a jury hear evidence about a victim's past only if the defendant knew about it during the confrontation and feared for his or her safety.
Pring-Wilson stabbed Colono after Colono insulted him on the street, according to prosecution witnesses. Lynch said Colono had ridiculed Pring-Wilson, who, after spending the night bar-hopping, walked by a parked car where Colono, his cousin Samuel E. Rodriguez, and Rodriguez's girlfriend sat waiting for a pizza order.
Fuming at the insult, Pring-Wilson opened the car door, Lynch said, and Colono came out swinging. But Pring-Wilson quickly overpowered the smaller man, shoved him against a brick wall, and repeatedly stabbed him, once in the heart, Lynch said.
Testifying in his own defense, Pring-Wilson said he curled up as Colono and Rodriguez, who were both unarmed, burst out of the car, knocked him to the ground, and beat him. He said he only pulled out the knife because he feared being pummeled to death.
Pring-Wilson's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to introduce detailed evidence that both Colono and Rodriguez had violent pasts to try to prove that they probably started the fight.
Rodriguez had been convicted several times of assault. Colono had a juvenile record that included arrests for disorderly conduct but no convictions for violence, law enforcement sources said at the time of the slaying. But Parker said defense lawyers had evidence of violence from other sources. 