Texas judge denies Karmelo Anthony’s bid for a new trial, upholds 35-year murder sentence

A retired Texas judge has shut down Karmelo Anthony’s push for a retrial, leaving the 19-year-old’s murder conviction and 35-year prison sentence firmly in place. Retired District Judge Michael Chitty issued the ruling after a two-day hearing near Dallas, finding no grounds to overturn the jury’s verdict in the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a Frisco high school track meet in April 2025.

The denial, AP News reported, came in a half-page order. Chitty cited his review of the evidence and arguments from the original trial but offered no further elaboration. For the Metcalf family, the ruling means the system held. For Anthony’s defense team, it means the fight shifts to the direct appeals process.

Anthony’s attorney, Russell Wilson, wasted no time signaling the next move. “Our commitment to our client has not changed,” Wilson said. “We will continue to advocate vigorously on his behalf through every lawful avenue available.”

The case that riveted Texas

The underlying facts have never been seriously in dispute. On April 2, 2025, Karmelo Anthony stabbed Austin Metcalf once in the chest with a knife during an argument at a school track meet in Frisco, Texas. Metcalf, unarmed, died in the arms of his twin brother, Hunter. Anthony fled the scene.

When police caught up with Anthony, he reportedly told officers, “I’m not alleged, I did it.” He also asked whether Metcalf was “going to be OK.” At trial, Anthony pleaded not guilty and claimed self-defense, telling the court, “I was protecting myself. He put his hands on me.”

The jury didn’t buy it. Witnesses testified that Anthony had been asked to leave a tent area as many as 15 times before the confrontation. A police report, as the New York Post reported, indicated Anthony had told Metcalf, “touch me and see what happens”, a threat that preceded any physical contact and fatally undermined the self-defense argument.

A Collin County jury convicted Anthony of murder, and on June 9, 2026, he received a 35-year prison sentence.

The defense strategy for a retrial

Anthony’s defense team built their retrial motion around three arguments: strict courtroom rules that allegedly hampered their case, improper jury instructions, and, most notably, a dispute over an unwritten agreement between prosecutors and defense attorneys.

That agreement, as Fox News detailed, was designed to keep damaging character evidence about both teenagers out of the proceedings. The defense argued the arrangement broke down on the final day of trial, creating a dilemma: if Anthony took the stand, the prosecution might void the agreement, opening the door to character evidence that could devastate his case. So Anthony never testified.

Wilson framed this as a fundamental denial of Anthony’s right to tell his side. The argument had enough procedural weight to generate a two-day hearing. But Chitty, after reviewing the full record, found it insufficient to warrant a new trial.

Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis was blunt in response. “We respect, and expected, the court’s decision denying the motion for a new trial,” Willis said. “The jury’s guilty verdict stands, and we remain confident in the process.”

A judge removed, then replaced

The retrial motion did produce one notable win for the defense before Chitty’s ruling. Original trial judge John Roach was removed from the appeal process entirely.

The reason: Roach gave a television interview to WFAA TV shortly after the trial concluded, publicly agreeing with the jury’s guilty verdict. “Yeah, they did, whatever they say, they got it right,” Roach told the station. Defense attorneys argued those comments demonstrated bias and made it impossible for Roach to fairly evaluate a retrial motion.

As the Washington Examiner reported, Judge Sid Harle agreed and recused Roach from the case. Frederick Douglass Haynes III stated that Roach “jumped the gun” by publicly endorsing the verdict, raising questions about whether Anthony could receive a fair hearing on his motion.

That procedural victory, however, didn’t change the outcome. Chitty, the retired judge brought in to replace Roach, reached the same conclusion the original judge had telegraphed: the conviction stands.

In high-profile murder cases, the removal of a sitting judge over public comments is unusual but not unprecedented. The reassignment of judges in the Alex Murdaugh case followed a similar pattern of procedural challenges preceding substantive rulings.

Why the self-defense claim failed, and keeps failing

At the heart of this case is a straightforward question: can a person who brings a knife to a track meet, threatens a peer, and then fatally stabs an unarmed teenager claim self-defense?

Texas law allows deadly force in self-defense, but only when a reasonable person would believe it necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury. Anthony’s own words, “touch me and see what happens”, established that he threatened violence before any physical contact occurred. Metcalf was unarmed. One stab wound to the chest killed him.

National Review’s editors put it plainly after the conviction: “The jury examined a terrible set of details and came to the correct, if harrowing, conclusion: that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Karmelo Anthony was guilty of murdering Austin Metcalf.”

The editorial board noted that Anthony’s prior threat and Metcalf’s unarmed status made a legitimate self-defense argument legally untenable. Nothing in the retrial hearing changed those underlying facts.

Anthony’s 35-year sentence reflected the gravity of what the jury found: not a tragic accident, not a moment of justified fear, but murder.

What comes next

Wilson has vowed to pursue a direct appeal. The specifics of that effort remain unclear, no timeline has been announced, and the legal grounds beyond those already rejected by Chitty have not been publicly detailed.

Several questions linger. What exactly were the “strict courtroom rules” the defense alleged? What were the precise terms of the unwritten agreement between prosecution and defense? What character evidence was so damaging that both sides initially agreed to suppress it? Chitty’s half-page order provided no answers, and the defense has offered few specifics beyond broad procedural complaints.

The case has drawn intense public attention in part because of its setting, a school track meet, the kind of ordinary event parents send their children to without a second thought. Austin Metcalf went to compete. He came home in a casket. His twin brother held him as he died.

Courts that handle post-conviction challenges in murder cases must balance a defendant’s right to appeal against the finality that victims’ families deserve. In this case, Breitbart reported, Chitty weighed the defense’s arguments and found them wanting.

The denial of the new-trial motion does not end Anthony’s legal options, but it narrows them considerably. Direct appeals are harder to win than retrial motions, and the factual record, an unarmed victim, a prior threat, a confession at the scene, is not the kind that appellate courts typically disturb.

A 17-year-old is dead. A jury heard the evidence and convicted. A second judge reviewed the record and agreed. At some point, the legal system has to mean what it says.