CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — A former Harvard graduate student was sentenced to two years in prison today after he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for stabbing to death a teenager who made fun of him.
Alexander Pring-Wilson, 29, changed his plea in Middlesex Superior Court as part of a deal with prosecutors that let him avoid a third trial in the death of 19-year-old Michael Colono.
The case attracted widespread media attention because of long-standing tensions between Ivy Leaguers and working-class Cambridge residents.
Pring-Wilson, a native of Colorado Springs, and 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 high-school equivalency diploma and was working as a cook at a Boston hotel when he was killed.
Pring-Wilson already has served at least eight months in prison, between when he was convicted of manslaughter in 2004 and when a judge granted him a new trial.
The judge overturned the manslaughter conviction in 2005, ruling the jury should have been allowed to hear evidence about Colono’s allegedly violent past.
He was tried again in November, but a judge declared a mistrial in December after the jury deliberated 10 days but failed to reach a verdict.
At both trials, Pring-Wilson testified he acted in self-defense after he was attacked by Colono and his cousin Samuel Rodriguez as he walked home from a bar on April 12, 2003. But prosecutors said Colono became enraged and pulled the knife after Colono ridiculed him for stumbling home drunk.
The fight broke out as Pring-Wilson walked by a car Rodriguez and Colono were sitting in as they waited outside a pizza shop for their order.
Pring-Wilson said he approached the car because he heard someone call to him and thought they needed directions. He said Colono and Rodriguez attacked him and began pounding him relentlessly around the head.
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.
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.
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 was a bystander at a fight during which a young man was stabbed. 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.
