A Black teenager who was convicted of murder in the fatal stabbing of a white peer at a high school track meet last year will not receive a new trial, a Texas judge ruled on Saturday.
The teenager, Karmelo Anthony, 19, was sentenced in June after an eight-day trial centering on an altercation at a track meet in April 2025, in Frisco, Texas, a Dallas suburb, during which Mr. Anthony stabbed Austin Metcalf. Mr. Anthony and Mr. Metcalf were both 17 at the time.
Mr. Anthony was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The murder trial and sentencing inflamed racial tensions in Collin County, a predominantly white region of North Texas, and drew protesters outside the courthouse. Some called for justice for Mr. Metcalf, while others called for Mr. Anthony’s freedom.
After the sentencing, Mr. Anthony secured a new legal team to appeal his murder conviction and sentence. After hearing testimony on Thursday and Friday, a new judge in the case denied Mr. Anthony’s request for a new trial. Mr. Anthony’s lawyers had appealed the decision, which will now move to the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas.
Greg Willis, the Collin County district attorney, said in a statement that he had expected the court’s decision.
“The jury’s guilty verdict stands, and we remain confident in the process,” Mr. Willis said. “Every defendant has the right to appeal, and our thoughts and prayers remain with the Metcalf family in the painful wake of last week’s hearing.”
Lawyers for Mr. Anthony said in a statement that they would continue to explore legal remedies.
“This denial does not end our work,” Mr. Anthony’s legal team said. “We knew when we entered this case that this case might not be won in a single courtroom or with a single motion. We will keep advocating for Karmelo until the justice we seek is obtained.”
In June, Mr. Anthony secured a new team of lawyers, who were working pro bono. His new legal team claimed that limited access to the courtroom had violated Mr. Anthony’s right to a public trial, that the court had improperly instructed the jury and that prosecutors had prevented Mr. Anthony from testifying that he had acted in self-defense. (Mr. Anthony has not denied that he stabbed Mr. Metcalf.)
His lawyers also made a successful bid to recuse the original judge on the case, John Roach, from additional proceedings after he gave an interview to a local news outlet in which he expressed personal opinions about the jury’s verdict.
Judge Michael Chitty, who took over the case, heard from prosecutors and Mr. Anthony’s new legal team this week. Some of the testimony focused on an informal, so-called gentlemen’s agreement between prosecutors and Mr. Anthony’s original legal team in which they had decided to limit what they would share in court about Mr. Anthony’s and Mr. Metcalf’s character and past behavior.
Prosecutors had suggested an agreement in which “both sides try the case without character, reputation, or extraneous evidence” for either teenager, Mike Howard, who was one of Mr. Anthony’s lawyers, said in an affidavit.
But Mr. Anthony’s new lawyers argued that such an agreement had been too limiting during the trial, impeding Mr. Anthony’s defense.
For instance, prosecutors felt that the defense had violated the agreement by mentioning that Mr. Anthony had been involved in a chess club, according to the testimony of one of Mr. Anthony’s original lawyers, Toby Shook.
Mr. Howard said in the affidavit that prosecutors had said that “if we called Mr. Anthony to testify, character, reputation, and extraneous evidence pertaining to Mr. Anthony were in play.” Mr. Anthony then chose not to testify during the trial.
Testimony on Friday from Bill Wirskye, a prosecutor, shifted away from the agreement and focused on security concerns during the murder trial, such as death threats made against lawyers and others involved in the case.
Mr. Wirskye also said that some social media influencers and content creators had been “bad actors” in the case, spreading misinformation to attract views and clicks.
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