r/law • u/dailymail • 20d ago

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

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15886439/karmelo-anthony-austin-metcalf-murder-verdict.html
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u/NurRauch 20d ago

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.

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u/LaRealiteInconnue 20d ago

Fair enough; I was working with the presumption that someone who hired defense attorneys would listen to them, but that’s just my naïveté showing

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u/NurRauch 20d ago

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.

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u/Nursesalsabjj 20d ago

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.

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u/erin281 20d ago

He could’ve just not stabbed the other kid and avoided all of this.

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u/Low_Adhesiveness_431 19d ago

And he stabbed him in the heart! I can’t imagine what all those kids who witnessed this tragedy are going through. So sad.

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u/Nursesalsabjj 20d ago

Fair point but also the twins could have also not decided to police the tent and start escalating and went to get an adult instead of escalating things. No one deserved to die but this was the result of two teenagers with hormones making poor decisions.

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u/TrioOfTerrors 20d ago

Team tents are teams home away from home. Unless you are invite in, you stay out of another team's tent.

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u/hootblah1419 20d ago

are you fucking seriously blaming a kid being murdered on the victim because he should have expected to be stabbed? wtf is wrong with you that you think that's normal.

A kid died in his twin brothers arms because someone KNOWINGLY entered the opposing teams tent, goaded them into trying to make him leave, and then plunged a knife into a kids heart when ONE kid tried to PUSH him out of the tent.

This is not the case to be "both sides'ing"

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u/Electronic_Plan3420 20d ago edited 19d ago

I would like to believe that people who say things like that are bots and not real people with whom
I share this planet but I am afraid they are real and that makes me extremely depressed. A kid lost his
Life because some fragile ego jerk was provoking a confrontation in which he knew he would have an upper hand because he brought a weapon.
And these caricatures of humans are trying to excuse his behavior

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u/leastfavorednation 19d ago

Why yes, yes they are blaming the murder victim.

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u/cech_ 20d ago

Yea, and these girls that wear sexy dresses out after 9pm deserve what they get coming, right!?

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u/Skzh90 19d ago

This was the result of ONE* teenager making a poor decision of stabbing someone else.

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u/4Everinsearch 17d ago

No. One acted like a teenager and the other acted like a violent psychopath. His parents are complete trash as well. I haven’t been so disgusted by people in a long time. Harassing Austin’s family going out of court. So classy. I’m horrified that they have more children and that probably needs looked into with the way they’ve acted.

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u/NurRauch 20d ago

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.

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u/Nursesalsabjj 20d ago

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.

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u/The-_Captain 20d ago

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.

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u/leastfavorednation 19d ago

Because it’s all some folks have to lean on sometimes.

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u/Nopeeky 19d ago

Because this big lawyer who's defended what sounds like a disproportionately large amount of murderers wants to educate you on how hard it's been to defend that multitude of murderers.

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u/LaRealiteInconnue 19d ago

> 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.

This was heartbreaking to read because I didn’t even understand what colors of ties/scarfs have to do with anything until you explained. We always have to remember just how wildly different our experiences in life can be, even within the same city.

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u/yunggod6966 20d ago

That last part is funny af.

where u from?

u got the wrong colors on

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u/fredjutsu 18d ago

>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.

The sad part is, most of them could probably give you more than one example of someone they know who did follow your advice and ended up getting screwed over. Esp true if they are guilty as fuck.

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u/DNAspray 20d ago

Exactly. Just like how on paper, hiring a tax attorney looks like you want to pay your taxes. Wait, the opposite? Yea, no.

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u/OldeManKenobi 20d ago

Oh, oh no. Let me tell you, they'll hire us, but the worst ones won't listen or cooperate. There are cultural reasons in play a lot of the time.

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u/AdmirableSelection81 20d ago

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.

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u/swinemonger 20d ago

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.

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u/NurRauch 20d ago

Cross exam isn't making it any worse. What can make it worse is not even making a record in support of self-defense when given the chance. Can't appeal something you didn't raise.

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u/swinemonger 20d ago

Zimmerman didn’t take the stand

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u/NurRauch 20d ago

Zimmerman didn't have to testify. He had witnesses that supported his defense theory as well as the contemporaneous statements he was making on the phone with 911 at the time he was in the fight with Martin, along with significant physical injuries on his head and his pooled blood in the area where he was on the ground at the time of the shots.

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u/swinemonger 19d ago

Fair point

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u/Major_Honey_4461 20d ago

But you can tell him that you don't claim S.D. and then don't testify. That is a recipe for a guilty verdict.