Judge removed from Karmelo Anthony self-defense case
A Texas judge has been taken off the Karmelo Anthony case after defense attorneys argued there were legitimate questions about bias. Anthony, who is challenging his 35-year prison sentence in the killing of Austin Metcalf, maintains he acted in self-defense. A different judge will now handle the next hearing, where his legal team plans to argue that his constitutional rights were violated during the original trial.
Anthony’s effort to undo his murder conviction heads back to a McKinney, Texas, courtroom Friday, following testimony from his former attorney that an unresolved dispute over an informal agreement played a role in the teen defendant not testifying at trial.
Retired District Judge Michael Chitty is now presiding over Anthony’s motion for a new trial. Earlier this week, Judge Sid Harle removed Judge John Roach, who oversaw the murder trial, from any further trial-court proceedings in the case.
Harle concluded that an objective observer could reasonably question Roach’s appearance of neutrality after the judge publicly stated that the jury “got it right” and defended multiple rulings he made during the trial.
Anthony, 19, was found guilty in June of murdering 17-year-old Austin Metcalf. Prosecutors said Anthony stabbed Metcalf to death during a confrontation at a Frisco track meet. A Collin County jury later sentenced him to 35 years behind bars.
Karmelo Anthony is shown after being transferred into the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was taken to his assigned facility, the Pack Unit near Navasota. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
The new-trial hearing centers on an unwritten agreement between Anthony’s first defense team and prosecutors, which was meant to prevent the jury from hearing potentially harmful character evidence about people on both sides of the case.
Mike Howard, Anthony’s former lead defense attorney, testified Thursday that he believed the agreement would still have allowed Anthony to take the stand, as long as his testimony stayed focused on the fight under the tent at the track meet.
Howard said that changed on the final day of trial, when prosecutors told the defense the agreement would not apply if Anthony took the stand and that the defense had already opened the door to character evidence.
Austin Metcalf, 17, was stabbed to death at a Texas track meet. (Jeff Metcalf)
He said the dispute led to a heated break in the proceedings and made Anthony unwilling to take the stand.
Under cross-examination, Howard acknowledged the lawyers never expressly agreed on whether a testifying defendant was covered by the arrangement. He said he could not say whether prosecutors acted in bad faith.
Lead prosecutor Bill Wirske said the agreement was mutual and that the parties were aligned on the need to keep character evidence out of the trial. Wirske said the state did not believe the agreement applied to Anthony’s testimony.
Wirske said the agreement kept jurors from hearing allegations involving Anthony’s history with knives and violence. Anthony’s new legal team has argued it also excluded school records, social-media posts and videos that they say could have supported his self-defense claim by showing prior aggressive behavior by Metcalf and his twin brother, Hunter Metcalf.
File photo of Austin Metcalf, a junior at Memorial High School in Frisco, who was stabbed in the chest allegedly by 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony, a student-athlete from Frisco Centennial High School. (Courtesy Jeff Metcalf)
The court has not made findings on those allegations.
Anthony’s motion also argues that courtroom-access restrictions violated his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial and that jury instructions limited jurors’ ability to consider his self-defense claim.
Howard testified that the lawyers and Roach held more than a dozen off-the-record meetings before trial. He said no pretrial motions were formally filed because the parties used what he described as an “old-school” system of filing materials directly with Roach.
Judge John Roach is depicted in a courtroom sketch during the Karmelo Anthony murder trial. (Pat Lopez)
Howard also said the defense discussed waiving some public-trial access because of security concerns, but that no Sixth Amendment waiver was made on the record. He testified that the decision not to use an overflow room was tied to technology concerns, not a specific security threat.
Former defense attorney Toby Shook is expected to testify Friday. It was not immediately clear how many additional witnesses Anthony’s lawyers planned to call.
Chitty must rule on the motion by Monday under Texas rules. If he does not grant it by then, the motion will be denied by operation of law and Anthony’s direct appeal will continue.
News Outlet has reached out to Anthony’s defense team for comment.
