The Freedom Bulletin

Six more witnesses testified for the prosecution in the Pring-Wilson trial yesterday. The first three – Donald Mahoney, Robert Leary, and James Greene, were police officers who responded to Pring-Wilson’s 911 call. They described how he told them he was just a witness to a stabbing and then pointed them in the direction he believed the victim and perpetrators had gone. According to the officers, Pring-Wilson didn’t seem drunk and didn’t appear to have any serious injuries.

After a recess, three more witnesses took the stand. Ricardo and Elizabeth Rodriguez, the brother and sister-in-law of Sammy Rodriguez, described how they went to Beth Israel Hospital after hearing about the stabbing and then picked up the car and found Colono’s jacket, with several knife holes, in the back seat. Finally, detective John Fulkerson described how he talked with Colono’s famliy members at the hospital after the stabbing and interviewed Pring-Wilson at the police station the next morning.

Sorry for posting this so late! Court got out at 1:00 today, but I don’t know what went on, because I wasn’t there. Hopefully there’ll be some news coverage!

Unbeknownst to me, there was a hearing in the Neil Entwistle case today. His defense lawyer, Elliot Weinstein, wanted the trial to be delayed even further, until March, to give him time to sort through 9000 pages of new evidence. The judge denied Weinstein’s motion for now but might decide to delay the trial if the defense can present more reasons to do so.

I am quite upset at the court system and the news media that this hearing was not publicized in advance in any way whatsoever. Each day when I go to the Cambridge courthouse to observe the Pring-Wilson trial, I check the court docket, which (in theory) allows one to look up all past and upcoming court dates for any trial. The docket made no mention of a hearing for Entwistle today. Now I am not sure if the hearing that the docket said would be next Tuesday will even happen…

Anyway, to see a picture of Entwistle at today’s hearing, go to the Boston Herald.

Today at Alexander Pring-Wilson’s trial, prosecution witness Samuel Rodriguez finished up his testimony, which he began Friday. Rodriguez was an eyewitness to the fight that resulted in the death of Michael Colono. He is also Colono’s cousin. Rodriguez says Pring-Wilson opened the car door, challenged Colono to a fight, and stabbed him, and that he jumped in to defend his cousin. The defense contends that Rodriguez teamed up with Colono to attack Pring-Wilson and beat him to the ground.

Today’s testimony began with the cross examination, as the direct had taken place on Friday. Defense attorney Peter Parker got Rodriguez to admit several inconsistencies: whether the car was on or off, whether Rodriguez was in the driver’s seat (as the defense claims) or the passenger’s seat (as he claims), and what exactly Colono called Pring-Wilson (initially an obscenity, but then Rodriguez changed it to “idiot”). Like Giselle Abreu, who was also in the car, Rodriguez admitted that he hadn’t seen Pring-Wilson punch Colono or wield a knife until after he had been beaten to the ground. While trying to describe where he punched Pring-Wilson, Rodriguez began crying, which resulted in a 5-minute recess.

After the break, Parker brought up Rodriguez’s past criminal convictions, all of which he admitted to. The list included the following:

• malicious destruction of property
• assault and battery
• possession of a firearm without a license and resisting arrest
• assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and malicious destruction of property (the prosecution got this one stricken from the record)
• assault and battery and assault with a dangerous weapon
• possession of a firearm and ammunition without a license
• carrying a concealed weapon without a license

Parker also brought up incidents when Rodriguez beat up his former girlfriend, threw bicycles at a car, threw a cup in his sister’s eye,and pulled a knife out on his sister’s husband. On re-direct, prosecutor Adrienne Lynch tried to get Rodriguez’s violent incidents to look less bad, but in my opinion didn’t do too well. Rodriguez did say that his ex-girlfriend wouldn’t let him leave the house and that he apologized and called the police after he pushed her, but for the most part Lynch didn’t get him to look much better.

After a brief re-cross, another witness began her testimony. Julianne Sitler described how she saw Rodriguez and Abreu parked in front of a store, yelling to passerby for directions to a hospital. She had some medical training and helped out until paramedics arrived. Her testimony helped the prosecution a little bit because it showed that Rodriguez and Abreu were trying to get help, not evade the police. However, she couldn’t recall how many stab wounds Colono had, which is important in determining how viciously (or not) Pring-Wilson was stabbing him.

Today, during the second day of Alexander Pring-Wilson’s retrial, prosecution witness Giselle Abreu gave her version of the fatal events of April 12, 2003. Abreu was the girlfriend of Michael Colono’s cousin, Samuel Rodriguez. During direct examination, she described how she, Rodriguez, and Colono were waiting in their car for a pizza when she saw Pring-Wilson stumbling down the street, and Colono started to make fun of him. Abreu said that Pring-Wilson asked Colono “Did you say something?” and Colono replied “Yeah. Why, you want to do something about it?” Pring-Wilson replied “Yes” and opened the car door, instigating the fight. She then described how she and Rodriguez realized that Colono had been stabbed, frantically tried to get to a hospital, and eventually ended up calling 911.

Abreu admitted that Colono had been drinking before the altercation and that she lied to police at the hospital, telling them that she was driving by when she saw Colono fighting with Pring-Wilson.

On cross examination, defense attorney Peter Parker got Abreu to admit that she had a physical fight with Rodriguez on April 12, something that she had denied during direct examination. He also asked if she had sniffed cocaine that day, which she flatly denied, and questioned her timeline of the events – she says that she and Rodriguez left an apartment in Lynn at midnight, drove to Colono’s house, which was 45 minutes away, and then went to Pizza Ring, which was only a few minutes away from Colono’s house. Cell phone records show that Pring-Wilson walked by the car at 1:50 a.m. Were they waiting for the pizza for a whole hour, or were they just driving around looking for trouble? Maybe most importantly, Abreu admitted that she didn’t see Pring-Wilson’s knife, and Colono didn’t shout that Pring-Wilson had a knife, until Rodriguez had pulled him to the ground. This admission makes it seem more likely that Pring-Wilson pulled out the knife because he had been knocked to the ground, and not vice versa.

One funny thing I noticed was that during direct, Abreu and prosecutor Adrienne Lynch used the names Michael and Sammy to refer to Colono and Rodriguez and referred to Pring-Wilson by his last name or merely as “the defendant.” Parker’s first question on cross was something to the effect of “You were afraid of calling the police because of what Rodriguez and Colono had done to Alex, right?” But after two questions the judge made him stop! There was a brief bench conference, and then Parker resumed questioning, using the names Michael and Sammy. If the defense has to call them by their first names, shouldn’t the prosecution have to call the defendant Alex?

Opening statements, as well as the beginning of Abreu’s testimony, took place yesterday. Tomorrow Rodriguez is expected to testify. Should be interesting to see how much of his criminal history the defense will be allowed to bring up.

A jury has been selected in the trial of Alexander Pring-Wilson. As promised, I went to the trial, and the day was taken up by jury selection. Judge Christopher Muse called numerous potential jurors individually to the stand to question them, and each juror was either dismissed by the judge (usually because of a hardship that made it difficult for them to serve), dismissed by defense or prosecution lawyers, or selected to be on the jury. After the judge finished questioning the first batch of jurors (numbers 68 to somewhere in the 120s), the next batch came in (about 145 to 180) and was told the basics of the case, introduced to the defendant and the lawyers, and questioned as a group. Judge Muse asked the jurors several questions, including whether they knew anyone involved in the case, had any affiliation with Harvard, knew anyone who worked for law enforcement, had heard of the case, had any problems with alcohol, or had a hardship that made it excessively burdensome for them to serve. Then the same individual questioning process happened again until 16 jurors had been selected.

At the end of the day, the 16 jurors came back into the courtroom, sat in the jury box, and received instructions from the judge to ignore media reports about the trial, avoid talking to anyone about the trial, and avoid doing independent research. The day ended at about 4:30.

Several of Pring-Wilson’s friends and family members were present, as well as a couple of reporters. I bet the courtroom will be much more crowded tomorrow – the jurors are scheduled to visit locations important to the trial and then return to the courthouse for opening statements and testimony from the first three witnesses. The trial is set to last until December 7th. On Mondays and Wednesdays, the proceedings will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on other days the trial will last from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Awesome news for Red Sox fans: Curt Schilling will be back for another year!! See the Boston Herald for the full details. This makes me so happy, because he’s my favorite player!

According to the Harvard Crimson, jury selection began today in the retrial of Alexander Pring-Wilson. The Crimson reports that Pring-Wilson showed little emotion and that, surprisingly, there were few people in the courtroom.

I am planning to attend tomorrow’s proceedings, so tomorrow night you’ll hopefully have a firsthand account of what went on in the courtroom!