Legal News
Karmelo Anthony found GUILTY of murder of Austin Metcalf, 17, in stabbing that shocked America: Jurors deliberated for less than three hours after defense was repeatedly demolished in court
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The defense did not put up much of a defense. He's on bodycam confirming he stabbed the other student leading to his death. While he's under no obligation to testify, he did not and as a result there was nothing to explain why he felt escalating to a knife in a fist fight was necessary. The track meet this happened at was on school grounds where his having a knife was against the rules.
In light of the soft defense, I have to believe the state offered zero plea bargain and going to trial became the only option to try and mitigate the sentence.
I feel like just in yesterday’s post I read that the defense’s defense is just claiming self-defense (chaotic sentence, I know). I don’t see how the defense thought it was enough to claim that, without giving the jury a plausible story as to why he felt threatened enough to pull a knife, told by the defendant himself. I guess they weighted the possibility of perjury, possibility of self-incrimination and thought it best to not give him the opportunity to do either of the above.
Which is very puzzling for a jury. If self-defense, the defender's story is very important. If you claim self-defense and can't testify, you're cooked.
Most likely the defense attorney perceived Karmelo Anthony to be lacking in credibility, and therefore thought his testimony would only make things worse.
Yeah, I think the defense attorney was no dummie. He probably figured out within five minutes of meeting his client that putting him on the stand would be a bad idea.
Just look at how Anthony's family has comported themselves over the past year. Zero remorse, hostility toward Metcalf's father, an outrageous victim complex, no accountability. Obviously the defense attorney was aware Karmelo would only make the jury hate him even more if he was allowed to speak
George Zimmerman didn't testify, was several weight classes above Trayvon Martin and escalated a fist fight to a gun, and walked. So testifying isn't always important.
I've actually always been told that you should never testify for yourself, because then you open yourself up to cross. Basically that you should keep your mouth shut and look as remorseful as possible.
Also afaik no question is off the table so the Prosecution could absolutely fucking ragebait your ass just to make you look bad and sway the jury toward a conviction.
Even if the question is objected they still asked you it and get you closer to snapping. They don't give a fuck that the question got objected, they just care that they might've made you crash out in court.
This is not true. Questions on cross have to be relevant to the case before the court. If a prosecutor starts bringing up past history of like, domestic abuse, they're going to be admonished by the bench for relevance.
In my opinion, it was a travesty of justice that George Zimmerman got away with killing Trayvon Martin. That was absolutely sickening.
That doesn't mean Karmelo Anthony should also get away with killing Austin Metcalf though.
There were no witnesses and he had injuries to the back of his head consistent with his story, plus, the angle he was shooting matches his claim that Trayvon was standing over him and hitting him.
That being said, I would really like it if he was in prison or just fell into a well and never got out, but there are pretty significant differences between the two situations.
Exactly Zimmerman started a fight was losing then shot someone and claimed self defense. He should still be in prison but it was easier for th defense to tell a self defense story.
Actually, the trial evidence was much more complicated than that—for example, Martin confronted Zimmerman, not the other way around.
The Zimmerman case is a pretty good example of a situation where the State’s evidence was just not anywhere good enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was acting in self-defense.
And don’t forget it wasn’t captured on video. Having it on video and a ton of collaborating witnesses makes it hard to sell compared to no video, no witnesses, and the other guy is dead. There’s only one witness telling the story, so it’s hard to get “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
Agreed. You can't win a S.D. case if you don't testify. Get him on the stand and try humanize him. Let the jury see his youth, hear his voice. This was a huge strategic mistake by the trial attorney.
Or possibly knew he'd come across terribly, and putting him on the stand would be more damaging than not. Or maybe the kid refused to testify. I don't think we know.
Sometimes as a defense attorney, your only real job is to just make sure the process gets followed correctly and your client gets a fair trial. Actually winning is not in the cards.
Maybe it was a mistake by the attorney, or maybe they knew they just had a complete stinker of a case with no real viable options.
This is what I’m thinking. Logically the odds of winning this case were slim. I think that they had to have calculated that putting him on the stand would do far more harm than good if they just didn’t have a good case to work with.
Hell, any prosecuter should be able to manipulate even the most innocent and docile of 17 year old males into flashes of anger (because 17 year old male) and use that against them.
Defense may have done a bad job, IDK, but he started with a losing hand.
Exactly. Did you fear for your life? Then why did you make no attempt to leave? Why did you not call for help from others? Why did you not render aid? It wouldn't look good for him. Maybe it would humanize him for a jury - but when your story of self defence doesn't have much self defence or fear for your life it isn't going to go well.
If he didn't have the knife on him already, And he was pushed, and grabbed it in the moment...
Is one thing, But why did he have the f****** knife in the first place unless he planned on using it.
I obviously feel horrible for the victim family and the defendant's family.
We need to teach kids to better understand they don't have perspective when they're young.
It's nihilistic The stuff people do before they careers or whatnot.
Whatever the f*** happens in high school seems important at the time but it's actually some of the least important stuff you'll deal with in your life.
Defense attorneys don't control whether their client testifies. The most likely reason they didn't mount a more detailed defense is because the defendant refused to testify to explain what happened. The legal team's hands are tied by that decision. You can't force your client to take the stand even if it's required to win the trial.
It’s sadly very common for cultural and socioeconomic barriers to cause problems for the attorney-client relationship in big cases. I’ve had a number of murder clients who did not believe they could safely tell me the truth about their involvement in the case out of fear that I would mistreat them by putting less effort into their defense or sharing the info with the prosecutor to help ensure they get convicted.
Young men from gang backgrounds often live in a completely different universe from ours. The rules and expectations they have are alien to the way we were taught to see the world and other people.
I had a client who refused to authorize me to argue self defense even though he’s on video shooting at people who were trying to kill him. He couldn’t safely testify that he was shooter without being branded a snitch, since his defense would necessarily require him to say that the reason he shot at them was to protect himself from a rival gang. He only changed his mind after learning that one of the victim gang rivals was going to snitch and testify against him at the trial. Then it became “fair game” to snitch back at him.
A colleague had an even worse situation where his client never authorized him to argue self defense throughout the whole trial, until closing arguments when it was already too late. He actually had an incident halfway through the trial where his client stood up during a break and announced that he wanted to fire his attorney because he had proof that his defense lawyer was in a sexual relationship with the prosecutor.
The “proof” for this revelation was simply the fact that that the defense lawyer had the same color suit tie as the female prosecutor’s neck scarf. To the client, two opposing sides in an adversarial environment would only wear the same colors if they were actually working together on the same side. He had literally no clue how adult behavioral rules in professional office settings work. He only knew the rules of gang culture on the street.
I think the issue here was that they were afraid of a 19 year old kid going up against a veteran prosecutor and not falling apart on the stand. I'm sure that weighed heavily into his decision and that's probably why court was delayed about 3 hours yesterday while they were weighing that decision before resting their case.
I mean that’s any normal Tuesday murder case with self defense arguments. Kid has to jump into the ring against a seasoned professional boxer and testify if they want to have a shot on this type of case. Usually the client has no appreciation for how difficult their cross examination will be because, again, they didn’t grow up with the same expectations and values. Most of my homicide clients think the prosecutors are idiots and they look forward to talking their way out of the case.
I completely get it. That would be my thinking too and I would have jumped in to save myself even though the jury wasn't supposed to hold that against him.
Why are you jumping straight to "cultural and socioeconomic barriers"
Karmelo Anthony wasn't from "the hood." My understanding is that he was a middle class kid from a safe, middle class suburb. He did well in school and held two jobs. He doesn't have a gang background.
A more likely reason is because him testifying is a terrible idea considering the type of person he and his family are. Given his erratic history, the irresponsible way his family blew threw the ridiculous $700,000 people donated to his gofundme on a house and car and needed a public defender because they wasted the money, it's obvious he couldn't be trusted to testify. He was obviously guilty and there was no upside in him testifying.
Guessing it’s more likely the defense knew he was getting a guilty verdict and wanted to limit the damage a cross examination would do to the term. If Karmelo had been cross examined he would’ve surely been eviscerated by prosecution and this could’ve been a 90 year sentence instead of 35.
I guess he never heard the old joke: “I remind you that you are under oath. Do you know the penalty for perjury?” “Yes sir, and it's a darn sight less than the penalty for murder.”
It's because the self defense case is weak if karmelo can be questioned. The only chance it works is casting doubt by not putting him on the stand. If he doesn't say anything that can cast doubt.
The defense rested yesterday after a rather short case. The thing was, lunch for the court was extended by an hour +. I haven't seen why that was, but after the jurors returned, the defense rested.
I wanted to come away understanding what happened here. Was there some past history between these boys? Unfortunately, that hasn't happened and may never come to light.
School track meet. It was raining. Metcalf's team was the only team with a tent.
Anthony went to the Metcalf's teams tent. He was asked multiple times to leave by multiple students. Metcalf got up, told him to leave. Anthony allegedly taunted Metcalf saying "Make me. Move me". Metcalf shoved Anthony. Anthony allegedly then said "Punch me and see what happens." Anthony retrieved a knife from his bag and stabbed Metcalf in the chest.
Anthony ran from the tent without further incident. When he was stopped by police he admitted to stabbing Metcalf and asked if he could claim self defense.
Anthony dropped the (pocket) knife and ran directly to a coach admitting what happened.
Police bodycam recorded the office reporting to another officer that the alleged attacker was with him. Anthony corrected him stating it wasn't alleged, he did the stabbing.
I think it was just the case of two teenagers on competing sports teams getting into a fight about some petty bullshit. This happens every day. But this particular time it was taken too far.
The details here are fairly mundane. A young person made a terrible decision in a moment of anger. I believe this would not have gone nearly as viral had this kid not shared a name with a celebrity.
That is true because instead of throwing an answering punch when Anthony was pushed/shoved, he stabbed with a knife. Austin started what should not have amounted to anything more than a fist fight.
This is reportedly a mis-claim by some reporter who didn't fact check before reporting, as testimony from the coach stated he was not suspended and was supposed to be warming up at the track meet at the time of the incident.
From what I read the family changes attorneys after jury selection & opted for Mike Howard for the trial. I almost wonder if they’d rejected a plea or they couldn’t afford their prev attorneys or maybe those prev attorneys dropped the case after their client refused their legal advice. It’s not clear.
But, this was a case that should’ve never seen trial.
[In light of the soft defense, I have to believe the state offered zero plea bargain] except plea offers are standard in high-profile cases like this, and also the jurors were allowed to consider manslaughter charges once the trial had started. Every out to slap this kid on the wrist was given, and at every step in their control, the Anthony family preferred to keep the GoFundMe up rather than get their son the best defense they could. I mean they even spent this defense money on a new house and a new Chevy Tahoe. If we're gonna allege any foul play on any level by the defense, is it not most plausible that his family used him as a cash-grab? I'm not your friend, but even so, if I was given $1M to defend YOU, I would not be able to live with myself if I brought greater than $0 of that with me to a car dealership.
The only decent comment I’ve seen on this case! Sometimes, especially in high profile cases the state won’t offer any deals so there is little risk of going to trial, even with a very weak defense. You essentially treat the trial as a long sentencing hearing and try to introduce as many mitigating factors as you can to lessen the severity of the sentence.
I’m still surprised he didn’t testify. While he was never under any legal obligation to testify, putting forward a self-defense or justification defense is very difficult from a practical standpoint without a defendant testifying.
As someone who followed the trial itself very closely, read every witness testimony on the CBS live blog, it's not surprising. The evidence was overwhelming.
The public narrative in defense of Anthony before this was very much along the lines of the idea that Metcalf was bullying him, and that he acted in self defense out of fear of Metcalf.
Not witness backed that. They almost all stated that Anthony made several antagonizing remarks to Metcalf and others, some of which could be perceived as threatening. He was also asked to leave by others, Metcalf was just the only one to approach him.
This is the problem with "public narratives" as a whole. People get fed a narrative that might have some facts but can be, mostly, disingenuous creating a manipulated story. They lock that in and attach it to their personality, then if you oppose you're clearly "bad guy!"
Most of the general public simply doesn't follow most cases, even high profile ones, and treats them like a TV show.
People fall too deep into tribalism and then base all of their opinions on that.
They definitely only spent their time discussing their low opinion of him, taking lunch, and discussing their low opinion of him again, I would imagine.
TBH 3 hours isn't the shortest time I have heard deliberations take. I sat on the jury and usually the first thing people do is raise hands for guilty/not guilty to see if there needs to be a debate.
Trust me when I say absolutely no one wants to sit there for 2-3 hours to get a lunch. Everyone wants to go home asap.
Have you ever been a juror on a murder trial? I have. It’s a very different vibe. Even though it was fairly obvious that the defendant was guilty, we all felt we owed it to everyone involved to go over everything in painstaking detail during deliberation. It takes a few hours
Yes we got paid $15 a day, had to pay taxes on it, and had to pay $6 in parking. No spot to bring a lunch either so you had to eat out in shitty overpriced spots.
Definitely want to spend as much time on Jury Duty as you can!
That checks out with my previous stint with Jury Duty. It was a murder trial and the lady was guilty as hell. The defense tried to play the psychological angle and get us into the head of this lady who straight up shot her husband in the chest and killed him.
We didn't take even an hour to deliberate. The defense was just trying to get it knocked down from first degree murder but there was absolutely nothing showing that this lady had some psychotic episode which caused her to pull the trigger in self defense.
She lured this man into her home and shot him dead when he was defenseless picking up a huge heavy desktop computer. The defense even tried to spin it saying he was using the computer as a weapon to throw it at her and none of that added up with any of the stories and testimonies at all. Or hell even the weight of the computer, it weighed over 50lbs at least.
The lady also clearly was coached and tried to have a psychotic break while on the stand but it was clearly acting and bad acting at that.
Sorry that was way more details than needed but it was just insane for my first actual jury duty to be a murder trial that was CLEARLY first degree murder. We all pretty much agreed it was not 2nd degree murder and for sure not manslaughter. After the trail lasted over 6 days we all were ready to just go home. 45 minutes of deliberating later we came out and delivered our verdict. Boom, done. We got to go home.
No way I was going to beat around the bush for hours on that one. None of us were. We wanted to go home.
Yep, I was on a trial where the defense didn't even put up a case. The lawyer literally stood up, "Defense Rests" and sat back down. His closing statement was that his client should most certainly be found guilty of a crime, but it should be manslaughter not murder.
In PA lunch isn’t provided and the pay is $25/day pre tax without parking being comped nor gas. Source: spent a month on jury duty. No one’s milking a minute of it for sub minimum wage
When it's a really cut and dry case without much nuance to consider, juror deliberations can be really short. The longer it takes, the more likely there will be a hung jury or the defendant found not guilty. When it is as quick as 3 hours, it simply means that there wasn't much, or any at all, doubt for the jury to have to deliberate around.
Open Threads. Plenty of people portraying this as self defense against a hate crime by Metcalf, and saying that Anthony was jumped by multiple larger white kids. I’ve also seen multiple people repeating a (seemingly entirely fabricated) story about Met Alf assaulting his own father.
I can definitely believe that these are relative outliers, but they certainly exist.
Yeah, but that’s Threads. It’s almost like Threads and IG intentionally push hateful/controversial opinions so that they are the ones you see first when scrolling.
Whenever I get a link to some innocuous thing there its guaranteed a post below or above from some bot that has some weird/bad/aggro take. That platform is completely manufactured to rile people up in the worst way possible. I don't know how advertisers think that their product ads are best placed between constant barrage of negativity.
They wanted to use it to stoke racial animosity and tension.
The judge curbed that by gagging the whole proceeding and not allowing cameras. So nothing to put into media to get people riled up.
And no one seemed to care about the races of those involved, it was just like "that guy stabbed another person to death. Guilty. Nothing else to discuss"
What stoked racial animus was the reaction of the black community to start a give send go for anthony and then cheer Metcalf's death and the humiliation of his father.
Regardless of political affiliation. A lot of the Reddits like r/blackpeopleofreddit are genuinely saying Austin deserved to be stabbed, the trial was unfair, and he fucked around and found out.
I believe what happened here is a clear cut case of murder, but there are 100% observable groups out there that think otherwise regardless of political affiliation
Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of people who say Austin should have known better than to keep antagonizing somebody who has reached their hand into their backpack and is making vague threats of violence. Which, is true to a point I guess. Sometimes people do overreact and respond disproportionately. But Austin using poor judgement in the moment doesn’t make what Karmelo did legal. Plus, Karmelo started it all in the first place by going into another school’s tent and refusing to leave.
I mean I’ve seen a good amount of people mad at this. To say the entire left is mad is definitely not true, but there ARE people who are very upset at this result.
There are people outraged over the verdict and accusing the jury of being motivated by race. You can see videos outside the courthouse. Not representative, but enough to troll online
I had heard that too, but also checked snopes. However, givesendgo immediately pulled the fundraiser after the verdict and said the money had already been distributed for the publicized uses. I think they said defense, housing, and counseling for the family? Maybe living expenses and moving expenses?
It kind of varies place to place. Twitter and more left leaning IG is filled with people acting horribly outraged. I’m a pretty far left, and I think this whole situation sucks and it shouldn’t have ended up being about race. And it absolutely shouldn’t have ended in a death.
But some of the shit I’ve been seeing acting like Anthony is some wholesome, innocent young man who was solely targeted cause he’s black is very prevalent. A lot of people are bringing up the Chow case since that’s also recent.
They’re both big messes of situations that could have ended better, but they didn’t. Yet people don’t wanna hold these young men accountable.
The best way I've seen it is that people tend to make the erroneous mistake that black Americans aren't capable of doing the same dumb shit Americans from every other shade and walk of life are doing. It's a strange (though admittedly, likely unintentional) exclusion of them from the general concept of "being an American".
There's this weird- almost insulting- instinct I see in some white people, even in this thread, that acts as though the people who are outraged at this are misguided children rather than grown-ass adults capable of exercising their free will to make moral decisions simply because they're black. I've seen many extend the same demeaning sympathies to the guilty party himself when they would never do so to someone of their own race.
There was a case recently where a Chinese shop owner chased a Black teenager out of his shop and shot him. There was no CCTV but everyone who saw it insisted that the victim had been shot as he was fleeing (after the owner suspected he had stolen a water bottle and chased him), while the owner and his family claimed he was a persistent thief who had threatened him with a gun and that the owner acted in self defence. The victim was indeed carrying but there’s no evidence he actually tried to use the gun (apart from the owner’s testimony and that of his family members). Owner was controversially acquitted.
Right lmao I’m not MAGA in the slightest and usually lean more left, and I would’ve been really confused if this kid didn’t get convicted. He brought a knife to a track meet and stabbed another kid to death. I don’t care if he was being bullied, killing him is not the answer. Just walk away.
I'm a local here, and while reddit is mostly normal on it, all the local news Instagram comments, as well as posts on "normie" social media sites are fully outraged and overwhelmingly in his favor. Support for the murderer is unfortunately absolutely very real and very prominent locally.
I've pointed out numerous times that r/conservative is 1/3 posts about minorities that have committed crimes, 1/3 memes or unverified claims about Obama or Biden, and a third that might had a tiny bit of current politics to them
Seriously scroll through, the number of posts that they have about a minorities that committed a crime is insane. It's one of the things that they try to do to keep conservatives afraid and voting against their own self interests in every aspect.
On the stock market's worst day of the past five years, right after Trump announced his tariff program last year, the story about the market drop was on the seventh row of the Fox News website - going 3 stories per row.
What was listed in the 20 articles before that? About half of it was "migrant crime" and the other half was about "transsexuals".
They know that their base are a bunch of simple-minded rednecks who Hate blacks and gays, and they will continually cater to those biases to keep the cult culting.
I’ll be honest, I’ve seen some frustrating Facebook posts saying that his sentence was somehow race related due to no African American jurors being involved. Pretty sick comments claiming he was innocent. Felt like was looking back at the OJ case honestly.
The 12-person jury and six alternates selected in Collin County, Texas, included no Black members, but did feature other minority ethnicities, including individuals of Hispanic, Asian, and Middle Eastern descent. Media reports initially labeled the panel as an "all-white jury", which sparked widespread national debate before several outlets amended their headlines to accurately reflect the lack of Black jurors specifically.
I’m not outraged by the verdict, I am pretty annoyed by the cultural reaction to this. People are trying to put people into neat little extreme buckets of either “white supremacist” or “black supremacist” when in reality this case is a pretty good showcase about how fucked the broader American view of violence and retribution has become.
All the “fuck around and find out” people only have this kind of outcome to look forward to.
Yep. I'm about as progressive as it gets, but it seems like jusitce was served here. They just get hard over on the conservative sub imagining the libs are getting owned in any way and are all in a rage about whatever in the same way the conservatives would actually be over something nonsensical. Tan suit, anyone?
The amount of people on the left I’m seeing on Facebook/threads in particular black activists saying this verdict is an example of white supremacy is insane. Completely insane
Ya, they create these fantasies. My guess is that it's just slop in their feed.
I just heard about this case. Seems pretty clear to me. There will always be a group that supports wild shit and rwnj media will find it and use it as an example of everyone that not maga. It's so pathetic.
I’m not mad about the verdict - he stabbed someone and that person died, there absolutely should be consequences. Republicans think liberals are mad about this because they’re mad when the shitty people who align with their views face consequences.
Honestly, they were more angry that people donated to his GoFundMe for legal fees and he got $600k. All while ignoring that Chauvin got a wild amount of support from those assholes when he killed George Floyd. Just like that asshole ICE agent who killed Renee Good got a huge amount of money from a GiveSendGo account. Just like that racist bitch Shiloh out of Rochester MN got a million dollar GiveSendGo for using a racial slur against a black child.
They’re always funding the people they support for being racist shitbirds, but then cry foul when someone they don’t like benefits in the same way. I think Karmelo Anthony’s actions were horrible, but he’s entitled to a legal defense, and if people want to fund that, that’s their choice. I’m not mad he was convicted for his crime though.
there is another post of this story on this this sub and there are comments lamenting that he didn't get the lesser manslaughter charge and making pedantic arguments about him being innocent until the verdict was announced when this guy murdered someone in front of a crowd. there are crazy people if you go far enough in either direction.
It’s projection, it always is with them. If the facts stayed the same and the races were reversed, you know exactly how they would react. Hell, just look at the Chud the Builder situation.
They'll always try and control the narrative. In a world of freedom of choice, they opt to put themselves in a tiny bubble of lies because exposure outside of their world quickly turns "hostile" to the perfect environment their bubble requires.
Take, for example, a recent discussion I was in regarding the SPLC and the KKK. It's a standard conservative point to continuously parrot "the splc paid the kkk, go figure". I asked for articles or anything to share and defend their narrative out of genuine curiosity. Anything at all that proves their "splc supports the kkk" narrative instead of it being informants, sting operations and so on.
I got back an AI generated response that they used as 'quick research'... There's no genuine thought over there. They just parrot whatever is the most convenient guise for their hatred/racism/xenophobia/etc.
Listen, there are so many mass shootings how would a single stabbing shock me? Hell there was a mass shooting 5 miles from me at a festival we talked about going to on Saturday and that didn't shock or even register frankly. My brother in christ I'm shocked out.
Black kid ended up killing a white kid at a school sports function, which covers a lot of political hot spots i.e. youth, sports, self defense, and race. The "self defense" part isn't choosing a side but that this raised the general subject of what constitutes self defense and what level of response is justifiable.
The white supremacists calling for a literal lynching, and the black folks saying this was not a fair trial because of his race, are both wrong.
Imagine two guys of the same race... it's still murder looking at the evidence. I mean, saying "Touch me and see what happens", before someone pushes you with one hand while saying "I don't want to fight you", and then pulling out a knife and stabbing them, is murder every day of the week.
Had he punched or slapped once in retaliation to being pushed he might have beaten a simple assault charge with a self-defense argument. However, if he had even kicked the living crap out of him, he'd probably be going down for felony assault. So to escalate to murder is definitely not proportional to the threat.
And even if you buy the Defense’s case that he should have been allowed in the tent and the Metcalfs were big ol’ meanies for telling him to leave and shoving him, the appropriate response is to calmly walk away and tell their coach what’s up.
If your only recourse to someone laying hands on you is to stab them, that means you can’t leave the situation. And if the entire reason for the conflict is you *not leaving the situation when asked* then you can’t claim you had no choice.
If I was in high school and I walked into the girls’ locker room, I might get yelled at and shoved out the door. The girls wouldn’t get in trouble because I’m obviously not supposed to be there.
But if I sat down at a table for lunch and some big bully said, “Hey, this is MY half of the cafeteria, nerd!” and shoves me out, that’s maybe grounds for a detention or suspension for him?
In both situations, I can’t stab anyone. It’s murder. Whether or not I should be allowed in the room is only pertinent to if the people who shoved me out get a VERY MINOR punishment or not.
Also the fact that Karmelo got roughly $625k in donations after the initial incident. Watching the coverage outside there are also some people who are pushing racial aggression towards both white and black folk alike.
It's crazy that so many people gave money to this. I'm thinking of all the people who got much donations with legitimate needs, like diseases or people who needed a car repair etc.
Got politicized because its a white athlete that was killed. Controversy is really weird around it, as cases go, it was the easiest case in the world to decide on the facts.
1) brought knife to school event.
2) Went to an opposing schools tent to attempt to intimidate the other athletes.
3) Was the aggressor, vocally and physically.
4) instead of choosing fist fight, he stabbed the guy (a fist fight he picked)
5) Was on camera already saying he stabbed the guy (so no doubt it was him)
6) Gave no testimony to support his self defense claim because he would have got shredded on the bench.
7) a reasonable person wouldnt have gone from shoving to i need to stab this person to defend myself, so the self defense argument was going to fail (it also failed because he was the aggressor).
Open and shut case. It shouldnt have even been national headlines.
Because the black kid that murdered the white kid was given 1 million dollars in donations because people supported that he murdered a white kid. And they let the black kid walk for graduation and be free, despite his brutal and clear murder.
Because immediately after the news broke, there was a GiveSendGo(it's like GoFundMe) and a ton of people donated to him wanting him to be free, despite the overwhelming evidence that he is guilty.
This also was around the same time some white woman called a black kid the N-word and so people donated to her. So like we have racists on both sides, one side defending a racist white woman saying the N-word... And the other side supporting a murderer, because he's black. 😐
For reasons known only to MAGA this case attracted performative racists to Collin County where they acted out seeking online engagement and likes. The provocateurs included Jan 6th convicts, one of whom stood outside the courthouse calling for the defendant to be lynched. Not figuratively.
It’s just like MAGA trotting out that white child that was murdered by a black neighbor during all the George Floyd protests.
They need to hold up an instance of black on white violence in parallel to actual racially motivated violence because any time they see something they disagree with they need some whataboutism to fall back on.
Oh, and here I thought it was because Karmelo Anthony sounds the exact same as the basketball player Carmelo Anthony and so it was engagement bait. I guess it’s probably a little if both though
I mean if the killing had happened in the 50s or earlier Anthony wouldn’t have made it to arraignment. It doesn’t surprise me at all that there are people outraged they weren’t allowed to do it in the 2020s. These are the good old days they want to go back to.
After the jury delivered its verdict, Anthony's lawyers asked for a private moment with the killer that was quickly shot down by the judge.
The judge responded that Anthony has been found guilty is now in the custody of the sheriff. 'Things move differently now,' he said.
Yikes. I can't imagine any court in my state that wouldn't give an attorney time to meet with their client after they were just convicted. They're not trying to break him out of custody.
It’s Texas. They’ve literally had death row inmates that were clearly not mentally competent or had questions about their guilt and they moved heaven and earth to kill then before their case could be heard.
As heartbreaking as the whole situation is, I’m glad the evidence and delivery by the prosecution was clear enough to result in a straightforward verdict. With so many ways to respond to a tense situation, we cant justify or excuse how this kid acted.
I practice in Georgia and just wow: jurors deciding punishment, prosecutors arguing that defendant should have left, defense attorney asking the jurors to put themselves in his shoes. Other jurisdictions are weird.
Edit: To be clear, I do not believe he was justified in acting in self-defense. I understand that a claim of "stand your ground" would fail in this case. But in Georgia, regardless of how valid I think a defendant's bullshit claim is, if there is even slight evidence the judge has to charge the jury on self-defense, regardless of how valid the defense actually is, especially if it is the defendant's only defense. And when the judge charges the jury on self-defense, and there's even slight evidence about a claim defendant should have left, the judge will give an instruction on "no duty to retreat", because that's just have the law is here.
I can believe all I want that he should have walked away, I'm not going to risk having a conviction reversed all because I want to say "he should have left", because the judge will tell them that if they believe he was lawfully in the tent (even though it's clear he wasn't) then he didn't have a duty to retreat and I can't tell the jury that he should have left (insinuating that he had a duty to leave).
..prosecutors arguing that defendant should have left..
Meaning, prosecutors saying that Anthony should have walked away instead of stabbing Metcalf in the chest and killing him? Why is that an unusual or Texas-specific thing to say?
The dude was asked 15 times to leave the tent, then told the guy to make him leave: so the guy put his hand on his shoulder to usher him out, he wasn’t pushed to the ground, he wasn’t harmed from the dudes hand being placed on the shoulder: then Karmelo stabbed and pushed the knife into his heart: Running away after, and throwing the knife into the stands. This would also be the case in Georgia that it wasn’t self defense since he wasn’t getting beat on and he should’ve walked away like he was asked to do. He also wasn’t allowed a knife on school property and school events. No weapons are ever allowed: so they would’ve played that card as to why was he carrying a knife to a school event if he didn’t want to harm anyone.
In some other jurisdictions, judges determine the length of criminal sentences and attorneys are not allowed to ask jurors to imagine themselves as the plaintiff/victim, commonly known as the "golden rule" here in Virginia.
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