CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—A judge declared a mistrial Friday after a jury said it was hopelessly deadlocked in the case of a former Harvard graduate student accused of fatally stabbing a teenager who made fun of him.
The jury deliberated for 10 days in the second trial for Alexander Pring-Wilson, 29, whose 2004 conviction of manslaughter for the death of 18-year-old Michael Colono was overturned the next year.
Pring-Wilson said he acted in self-defense after he was attacked by Colono and his cousin, Samuel Rodriguez, outside a Cambridge pizzeria as he walked home from a bar on April 12, 2003. Rodriguez said Pring-wilson became enraged when Colono ridiculed him for stumbling home drunk.
Prosecutors said they would put Pring-Wilson on trial a third time.
“We will honor the memory of Michael Colono by continuing to fight for justice on behalf of him, his family, and the Commonwealth. We fully intend to retry this case,” Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said in a statement.
Pring-Wilson, a native of Colorado Springs, Colo., will remain free on bail and will be allowed to spend Christmas in Colorado with his family, Judge Christopher Muse ruled after declaring the mistrial.
Pring-Wilson won a new trial eight months after being convicted of manslaughter when the state’s highest court ruled in another case that juries should be allowed to consider a victim’s violent history if it is relevant to a claim of self-defense.
During the second trial, jurors were given details about Colono’s criminal record, including a 2001 episode 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 testified Colono and Rodriguez both pounded him relentlessly in the head, and he pulled out his folding knife because he was afraid they would kill him. But Rodriguez told the jury that Pring-Wilson attacked Colono after Colono made a derogatory remark about Pring-Wilson’s apparent drunkenness.
The case attracted widespread media attention because of long-standing tensions between Ivy Leaguers and working-class Cambridge residents. Pring-Wilson, the son of Colorado lawyers, was studying for his master’s degree in Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard. Colono, a high school dropout, had fathered a child at 15. He had earned his equivalency diploma and was working as a cook at a Boston hotel when he was killed.
Pring-Wilson was originally charged with murder, but the jury in his first trial convicted him of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
His attorney, E. Peter Parker, said the deadlock in the second trial shows that at least some of the jurors rejected the prosecution’s claim that Pring-Wilson was the aggressor in the fight.
“We are thrilled that a number of jurors at this trial saw the Commonwealth’s case for what it was, and found that Alex’s conduct was a justified act of self defense,” Parker said.
“We will keep up the fight and will not rest until we get an acquittal and can return Alex to his family in Colorado.”
Colono’s brother, Marcos, and mother, Ada, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The fight between Pring-Wilson and Colono broke out as Pring-Wilson walked by a car Rodriguez and Colono were sitting in as they waited for their pizza order. Pring-Wilson said he approached the car because he heard someone call to him and thought they needed directions.
But Rodriguez said Pring-Wilson pulled open the car door and started the fight after Colono ridiculed him. Colono was stabbed five times in the chest and abdomen during the fight, which lasted just 70 seconds.
The prosecution focused on the lies Pring-Wilson acknowledged he told police during a 911 call he made seconds after the fight ended, and during police interviews the next morning. He initially told police he had witnessed a young man being stabbed, but described himself as a bystander. He later told a fire captain who responded to the 911 call that he had intervened in a fight between two other men because he had a pen knife with him.
Leone cited Pring-Wilson’s conviction at his first trial and evidence used at both trials in his decision to try Pring-Wilson a third time.
“The fact is that an enraged Alexander Pring-Wilson stabbed an unarmed Michael Colono several times in 70 seconds,” Leone said.
David Frank, a former state prosecutor who is now a writer for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, said self-defense claims can be difficult for prosecutors because they not only have to prove a defendant did what he is accused of, they also have to disprove he did it in order to defend himself. But he said the decision to try the case for the third time is a relatively simple one.
“They take a hard look at the evidence. They look at what was presented during the first two cases and ask themselves, Number One: Do we think he did it? and Number Two: Do we think we can prove it?”
