Mahoney noted Pring-Wilson kept putting his hand to his forehead, but he didn’t see any marks there.

Pring-Wilson had no trouble answering questions and didn’t ask for medical assistance, Mahoney said.

But Denner said his client had a different take on the encounter with Mahoney.

“The defendant was positive that he was beaten quite badly,” Denner said. “Because of the beating he was suffering from traumatic brain injury.”

CPD officer Robert Leary responded to the scene with Mahoney and testified that though Pring-Wilson was excited, he did not appear to be severely injured.

“From my vantage point I couldn’t see any cuts or bruises or contusions or anything,” Leary said.

Leary said he and Mahoney were trying to determine the whereabouts of the victim, so he did not focus on Pring-Wilson’s physical well-being or sobriety.

Richard Ma, the last witness called yesterday, was a resident at Cambridge Hospital last April and examined Pring-Wilson when he was brought in from the police station on the day of his arrest and the following day.

Over Denner’s objection that Ma was insufficiently qualified to give expert testimony on Pring-Wilson’s state of mind, Ma opined that Pring-Wilson suffered “no obvious head injury.”

Ma testified that, although Pring-Wilson complained of trauma, he did not display any physical signs of head injury on either day that Ma examined him.

“Before I touched him, he almost seemed like he was in pain,” Ma said. “The exam doesn’t coordinate with what the patient was saying.”

Ma also said that Pring-Wilson changed his story about whether he lost consciousness after being hit and kicked in the head during the incident. Pring-Wilson said on April 12, 2003 that he was not knocked out, but then said the next day that he lost consciousness for several seconds.

Ma conceded on cross-examination, however, that Pring-Wilson may have misinterpreted his question about his consciousness during his April 12 visit.

After hearing that Pring-Wilson had lost consciousness during the incident, Ma said he ordered a computed tomography (CT) scan of Pring-Wilson’s head, which turned up negative, indicating that Pring-Wilson did not suffer an internal head injury.

When Denner asked Ma why he did not follow up with an magnetic resonance imaging test (MRI), Ma said it was not an appropriate test for Pring-Wilson’s case.