A maelstrom of national media descended upon Cambridge last fall, when the court of public opinion portrayed the murder trial of Alexander Pring-Wilson as a case in which a rich, white Harvard graduate student was pitted against a poor, Hispanic local teen.

And this time, it was the Harvard student who was in trouble.

Following three weeks of testimony, emotional outbreaks, and the glare of Court TV cameras, then-26-year-old Pring-Wilson was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in early October for fatally stabbing Michael D. Colono, 18, during an altercation outside of a pizzeria on Western Avenue.

In April of 2003, the defendant had been walking home drunk, clad in shorts and sandals, when Colono, who sat in a parked car, heckled him for being “shitfaced.” After a 70-second brawl, Pring-Wilson struck Colono five times with a three-and-a-half inch Spyderco military knife. One of the blows pierced the victim’s heart.

A tearful Pring-Wilson broke down on the stand this past October, spending nearly a full minute choking back sobs and gasping for breath as the click of camera shutters went off in a flurry.

In the end, the jury of seven men and five women did not buy the defense’s claim that Pring-Wilson was acting in self-defense when he fought off Colono and his cousin, Samuel E. Rodriguez.

“It seemed to most of the jurors too calculated, his story, and a little bit too practiced and rehearsed,” recalls Jury Forewoman Carol D. Neville. “It didn’t ring true and it didn’t line up with the physical evidence.”

Superior Court Judge Regina Quinlan handed Pring-Wilson a six-to-eight year sentence—a reduction from the recommended 8-to-12 years—only two hours after the jury’s verdict, bringing the case to a climactic end.

But a Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) decision five months afterwards has breathed new life into the case that brought Cambridge’s town-gown tension to the fore and to homes nationwide. In a precedent-setting move, the SJC ruled that evidence of a victim’s violent criminal history is admissible in court, and may be relevant, if there is a question of who initiated the scuffle.

Quinlan reconvened the parties last week to discuss whether a retrial is in order, in light of the recent SJC ruling.

Jurors never heard of a police report alleging that on Sept. 15, 2001 Colono ordered food at a local dive and allegedly threw money in the cashier’s face, kicking the door and shattering glass after being asked to leave. And the defense has claimed that the jury was not privy to several assault and battery convictions that Rodriguez had racked up in years prior. This background information could have swayed jurors to believe that Colono and his cousin were the aggressors in the fight.

But former jury member Ceasar L. McDowell, an MIT professor, says this excluded evidence would not have led him to change his mind.

“People on the jury weren’t fooled,” McDowell says. “They didn’t think Michael and his cousin were without problems. We just didn’t think that was the issue.”

Despite being of no consequence within the jury room, the issue of Colono’s troubled past seemed to have caught—and held—the public’s attention.

TWO WORLDS COLLIDE