Karmelo Anthony’s Bid For A New Trial Just Failed

I told y’all this was going to happen.

Not because I’m a genius. Not because I have a crystal ball. I told you because I spent six and a half years as a police officer. I investigated serious crimes. I’ve dealt with self-defense claims. I understand what reasonableness looks like under the law.

And from the beginning, I told you the self-defense argument in the Karmelo Anthony case had a major problem.

Now, after all the celebrating over the original judge being removed from the post-trial proceedings, a new judge has reviewed Anthony’s request for a new trial.

He denied it.

After Anthony was convicted of murdering 17-year-old Austin Metcalf and sentenced to 35 years in prison, the original trial judge, John Roach, made comments during a television interview saying the jury “got it right.”

That created questions about impartiality, and Roach was eventually removed from handling the post-trial proceedings.

Some Anthony supporters acted like they had won the Super Bowl.

Victory!

Justice!

The judge is gone!

But I told you then what I’ll tell you now.

Getting a judge removed does not mean you get to remove the law.

It doesn’t erase the jury verdict. It doesn’t erase the evidence. It simply means another qualified judge comes in, looks at the legal arguments and makes a decision.

That is exactly what happened.

Retired District Judge Michael Chitty reviewed the matter and denied Anthony’s request for a new trial.

So after all that noise, we’re right back where we started.

One of the major issues raised in the request for a new trial involved a verbal agreement between prosecutors and Anthony’s original defense team.

According to the report discussed on my show, both sides agreed to keep certain character evidence away from the jury because this case was already overflowing with racial tension and death threats.

And here’s the part some activists conveniently leave out.

The excluded material didn’t only involve Austin Metcalf.

There were allegations that Austin had previously used racial slurs and bullied Black classmates.

That’s ugly.

If he did those things, I’ll condemn it.

But there was also evidence involving Anthony, including a disturbing text in which he allegedly wrote:

“When I stab SB, I’m going to lick their blood off the blade.”

So if we’re opening that door, we’re opening the whole door.

You don’t get to bring in everything that makes Austin look terrible while pretending the evidence that makes Anthony look terrible doesn’t exist.

This is the point people keep missing.

Whatever Austin allegedly said months or years earlier doesn’t automatically determine whether Karmelo Anthony was justified in using deadly force that day.

And whatever Anthony allegedly said previously doesn’t automatically prove murder either.

What matters is what happened during the actual confrontation.

That’s how this is supposed to work.

According to the case discussed on my show, there was an argument between Anthony and Metcalf at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas.

Anthony stabbed Metcalf.

Austin did not have a weapon.

And the jury rejected Anthony’s claim that the stabbing was legally justified self-defense.

That’s the issue.

Not whether Austin was a perfect kid.

Not whether Karmelo was a perfect kid.

Neither one needed to be perfect for the jury to evaluate what happened during those critical moments.

I’ve been saying this from the beginning.

Self-defense isn’t:

“I was angry.”

It isn’t:

“He disrespected me.”

It isn’t:

“I didn’t like what he said.”

Deadly force has to be legally justified based on the threat you’re confronting.

And based on the evidence presented in this case, the jury concluded that Anthony’s decision to stab Austin was not justified self-defense.

That’s why he was convicted.

People can scream about race until they’re blue in the face.

It doesn’t change that central issue.

Predictably, some people aren’t taking the new ruling well.

One commentator featured on my show immediately returned to race, complaining that the jury didn’t reflect people who looked like Anthony and arguing that evidence about Austin’s alleged racism should have been presented.

But notice what’s missing from that argument.

What about Anthony’s evidence?

If you’re going to tell me about Austin’s alleged racial slurs, tell me about Anthony’s alleged violent messages too.

Be consistent.

You can’t demand the jury hear damaging character evidence about one teenager and then ignore damaging evidence involving the other.

That’s not justice.

That’s advocacy.

Then I played another reaction.

“Free Karmelo.”

“I don’t know about no white lives.”

“All lives don’t matter over here.”

This is exactly the mentality I’ve been warning people about.

I don’t care whether it’s a minority of Black Americans who think like this. It’s still too many.

A young man is dead.

Another young man threw away decades of his life.

Two families have been permanently changed.

And somehow people still want to turn this into a racial scoreboard.

Black kid versus white kid.

Pick your team.

Defend your side.

That’s stupid.

I’m Black, and I don’t have to defend Karmelo Anthony because he’s Black.

Just like a white person doesn’t have to defend Austin Metcalf because Austin was white.

Wrong is wrong.

Another argument protesters continue to make involves the racial composition of the jury.

They believe Anthony wasn’t treated fairly because the jury didn’t look like him.

But justice is not supposed to mean assembling a jury where everybody physically resembles the defendant.

The question is whether the jurors can evaluate the evidence fairly and apply the law.

You don’t get an automatic acquittal because the jury isn’t racially identical to you.

You don’t get a new trial simply because activists don’t like the demographic makeup of the people who reached the verdict.

If there was a legal defect in jury selection, prove it.

That’s what courts are for.

But yelling “all-white jury” is not, by itself, an argument that Anthony was legally entitled to stab Austin Metcalf.

This is why this latest development matters.

People wanted another judge.

They got another judge.

People wanted the request for a new trial reviewed outside of Judge Roach’s involvement.

It was.

And Anthony’s request was still denied.

That doesn’t mean nobody can ever challenge anything about the case again. His attorneys can pursue whatever appellate remedies are legally available to them.

But this latest ruling should be a reality check.

Removing Judge Roach did not erase the conviction.

It did not erase the sentence.

And it did not magically transform this into justified self-defense.

I’ve never sat here and told you Austin Metcalf was an angel.

I said on my show that Austin apparently made bad decisions too.

If he bullied people, that’s wrong.

If he used racial slurs, that’s wrong.

But being an obnoxious teenager does not automatically justify somebody killing you.

And Anthony had his own history discussed during these proceedings.

This is why character assassination isn’t a substitute for evaluating the actual confrontation.

You can spend all day arguing over which teenager was worse.

It doesn’t bring Austin back.

It doesn’t get Anthony out of prison.

And it doesn’t answer the legal question that mattered to the jury.

People were mad at me when I said Anthony was going to be convicted.

People were mad when I said the self-defense argument didn’t make sense to me.

Then the jury convicted him.

People celebrated when the original judge was removed from the post-trial proceedings as if Anthony was about to walk out of prison.

I told you that wasn’t what it meant.

Now another judge has denied him a new trial.

At some point, we have to stop letting race dictate how we process reality.

You don’t help Black people by defending bad decisions simply because the person who made them is Black.

You help Black people by telling the truth.

You help young men by teaching them that being disrespected doesn’t give you permission to escalate a confrontation into deadly violence.

And you help society by applying the same standard regardless of the color of the person standing in front of you.

Karmelo Anthony wanted a new trial.

He didn’t get one.

And no amount of racial outrage changes why he’s sitting in prison today.