A Middlesex Superior Court judge delayed his rulings on two motions in the case of a Harvard graduate student charged with murder at the conclusion of a pretrial hearing yesterday.

Judge Charles M. Grabau said that he would rule by the June 1 trial date on the defense’s motion—which claims that a Cambridge jury would be biased due to the case’s extensive media coverage—to move the trial of Alexander Pring-Wilson to western Massachusetts.

Grabau said he also needed more time to decide whether Pring-Wilson was suffering from mental and physical trauma when he made statements to the police after allegedly stabbing a local teenager last April.

On Feb. 23, defense attorney Jeffrey A. Denner filed a motion in Middlesex Superior Court claiming statements Pring-Wilson made to police and friends “were not knowing, intelligent or voluntary,” which any statement must be in order to be admitted as evidence.

After hearing 17 witnesses over the three-day hearing, Grabau said he was not ready to make a decision.

“He took it under advisement,” said Seth I. Horowitz, spokesperson for the Middlesex District Attorney’s office. “It’s under review until he rules on it. There’s no set date by which he rules, but it’s usually not more than a few weeks.”

Pring-Wilson, a student at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the time of his arrest, is charged with fatally stabbing 18-year-old Michael D. Colono on April 12, 2003 after an early-morning altercation outside of Pizza Ring, a pizza parlor on Western Ave.

Denner has argued that his client stabbed Colono in self-defense.

MEDIA BIAS?

Though the defense is pushing for the trial’s relocation to Berkshire County, Grabau insinuated yesterday that the extensive media coverage that Denner claimed could bias a local jury.

During the second half of yesterday’s hearing, Kellyanne Conway, executive and CEO of The Polling Company, Inc., testified that a phone survey commissioned by the defense revealed that Middlesex County residents are more likely to have prejudices about the case.

She said her company surveyed 400 people per county in Middlesex, Suffolk, Lowell and Berkshire counties and found that media outlets in Berkshire County have not covered the case extensively—meaning potential jurors would have fewer preconceptions.

The survey showed that 47 percent of the 400 randomly-selected Middlesex residents reported they were familiar with the case, Conway said, compared to 21 percent in Berkshire County.

Conway noted the link between hearing about the case in the media and believing Pring-Wilson is guilty.

“Middlesex respondents were four and a half times more likely to believe the defendant is guilty,” Conway said.