—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.

Sidebar: In 1977, Trial Attracted More Local Buzz The Pring-Wilson case’s low local profile contrasts sharply with the buzz around Boston in the 1977 trial Commonwealth v. Soares, when a Harvard student was the victim—not the perpetrator—of a fatal stabbing.

That case stemmed from a fight in the “Combat Zone” neighborhood of downtown Boston, which led to the death of football player Andrew Puopolo ’77.

Puopolo’s teammates testified that the scuffle began when two prostitutes attempted to pick the football players’ pockets. Prosecutors argued that the three men attacked the Harvard students as part of a plan to help the prostitutes rob pedestrians. But defense lawyers contended that their clients were acting independently and rushed to protect the prostitutes from the footballers.

The trial stoked racial tensions in the city after three black men were convicted of first-degree murder in Puopolo’s death.

The case ultimately went to Massachusetts’ highest appellate court, which overturned the convictions because prosecutors had unconstitutionally excluded blacks from the trial jury.

In a second trial, a new jury found two of the three defendants not guilty, and convicted the third man on lesser charges of manslaughter.

“Some people feared that this [Pring-Wilson] case would provoke the same kind of—if not race—then class animosities” as the Soares trial, says visiting Professor of Government Jeffrey B. Abramson, a former Middlesex County assistant district attorney. But he says the Pring-Wilson trial has not yet elicited heated tensions in Cambridge.

CourtTV correspondent Savannah Guthrie says that the “clash between the classes” element of the Pring-Wilson trial attracted national media to the trial, “but I’m not sure that’s actually what the case is about.”

—DANIEL J. HEMEL