“The appellate court will look at the transcript to determine where there are any legal infirmities [in the case] as opposed to factual infirmities,” he said, citing as an example a situation where a judge admits graphic autopsy photographs as evidence that are likely to inflame a jury.

“Cases get reversed on that all the time,” he said.

But Galanter said he does not see a reason for a reversal in Pring-Wilson’s appeal.

“The global picture here is that this guy got a major break,” he said. “There is somebody who’s dead, [the jury] came back on a lesser charge and it was really a tragedy all the way around...there’s nothing in the record, at least that I saw, that would give rise to a reversal.”

Outside the court system, friends and family are finding other ways to support Pring-Wilson.

Tara L. Woody, a mother of two and a future law school student, said she formed an online support group and a petition on Pring-Wilson’s behalf after following the case on Court TV.

Woody said she started the group, which has over 150 members including Pring-Wilson’s mother, in response to what she called an unfair verdict.

“I think [District Attorney Martha] Coakley will run for Senate and I think she needs the Hispanic vote, and I feel like this was politically motivated,” she said. “I thought we needed to do something.”

Coakley said in a press conference earlier this month that she keeps her legal and political dealings separate.

Woody’s online petition had garnered 597 signatures as of yesterday. Her site is www.alexanderpringwilson.net. Colono’s friends and family also maintain a website, www.michaelcolono.com.

—Staff writer Hana R. Alberts can be reached at alberts@fas.harvard.edu.