A retired Texas judge denied Karmelo Anthony's request for a new trial in the fatal stabbing of a 17-year-old at a high school track meet, leaving his 35-year prison sentence intact and sending the fight to an appeals court.
Retired District Judge Michael Chitty issued his ruling Saturday after hearing two days of testimony in McKinney, Texas, rejecting every argument Anthony's defense team raised. Chitty reviewed the motion, the court record, the evidence presented, the attorneys' arguments, their briefs, and relevant case law before reaching his decision, Fox News Digital reported. His order did not detail his reasoning.
Anthony, now 19, was convicted in June of stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf in the chest during a confrontation at a Frisco, Texas, track meet in April 2025. A Collin County jury handed down the guilty verdict and sentenced him to 35 years. The case drew national attention, with race and courtroom procedure becoming flashpoints long after the jury spoke.
Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis said his office saw the ruling coming.
"We respect, and expected, the court's decision denying the motion for a new trial. The jury's guilty verdict stands, and we remain confident in the process."
Willis added that his thoughts and prayers remained with the Metcalf family "in the painful wake of last week's hearing." Anthony's defense team has already signaled the fight moves next to a direct appeal. Attorney Russell Wilson, now representing Anthony, told the Associated Press the team would "continue to advocate vigorously on his behalf through every lawful avenue available."
At the heart of Anthony's bid for a new trial was an oral agreement between his original defense attorneys and prosecutors. Both sides had agreed, off the record, to keep potentially damaging character evidence about both teenagers away from the jury. No one wrote the deal down. And when it mattered most, the final day of trial, the two sides disagreed about what it covered.
Former lead defense attorney Mike Howard testified at the hearing that he understood the arrangement to allow Anthony to take the stand, so long as his testimony stayed focused on the confrontation that took place under a tent at the track meet. But on the trial's last day, prosecutors told the defense the agreement would not apply if Anthony testified, arguing the defense had already opened the door to character evidence.
Howard said the dispute triggered a heated break in proceedings. Anthony, learning the terms had shifted, became unwilling to testify. For a defendant claiming self-defense, that silence carried enormous weight. As we previously reported, the unwritten deal sat at the center of the new-trial hearing from start to finish.
Under cross-examination, Howard conceded a critical point: the lawyers on both sides never expressly agreed on whether a testifying defendant fell within the scope of the arrangement. He also said he could not say whether prosecutors acted in bad faith.
Former defense attorney Toby Shook, who testified on Friday, backed Howard's general understanding. Shook said the original defense team always expected Anthony to take the stand in support of his self-defense claim. The position prosecutors took on the final day, he said, caught him off guard.
Shook described what happened next: during a break, the defense updated Anthony and explained that trial judge John Roach said he could not enforce the unwritten agreement. That left Anthony unsure whether testifying would allow prosecutors to introduce the character evidence both sides had agreed to suppress.
Lead prosecutor Bill Wirskye pushed back on the claim that the agreement was broken. Wirskye said the lawyers never discussed the specific details of what the arrangement would permit if Anthony testified. Prosecutors, he said, remained willing to honor the deal. His concern was narrower: the state feared testimony from Anthony or his mother could inadvertently open the door to the very character evidence the agreement was designed to exclude.
The defense tried to turn one of Wirskye's own materials against him. They introduced a continuing legal education presentation Wirskye had used in training courses on self-defense cases. One slide advised defense lawyers that the client "(probably) needs to testify." The implication was plain: even the prosecution's own lead attorney recognized how important a defendant's testimony can be in a self-defense case, yet Anthony never got to deliver his.
The character evidence kept from the jury has since become public. During the new-trial hearing, prosecutors revealed that Anthony had expressed a fascination with stabbing someone, had sent troubling messages to a girlfriend, and had texted in 2023 that he would "shoot the school up," Breitbart reported. Anthony also told police after the stabbing, "I'm not alleged. I did it." The messages about knives and guns that the jury never saw painted a far darker picture of the defendant than the self-defense narrative his attorneys had built.
Judge Chitty was not the original judge on the case. Earlier in the same week, Judge Sid Harle, who previously oversaw a trial related to the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, removed trial judge John Roach from all remaining proceedings. Harle found that a reasonable outside observer could question whether Roach appeared impartial after Roach publicly stated the jury "got it right" and defended several of his trial decisions.
Roach had given a post-verdict television interview in which he agreed with the guilty verdict and defended his decision to excuse three prospective Black jurors, which produced an all-non-Black jury, the Washington Examiner reported. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, a prominent activist, said Roach "jumped the gun" by weighing in publicly. The defense argued those comments compromised any appearance of neutrality. Harle agreed.
The removal of the trial judge added another layer of procedural turbulence to a case already defined by it. Anthony's defense team had demanded both a new trial and the judge's removal almost immediately after the conviction.
The oral agreement dispute was the centerpiece, but Chitty also considered two additional claims. Anthony's defense argued that courtroom access restrictions during the trial violated his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. They also challenged the jury instructions, contending the language limited jurors' ability to properly consider self-defense.
Chitty rejected all of it. His half-page order, as the New York Post reported, offered no explanation for why he found the arguments insufficient, only that he had reviewed the full record and denied the motion.
The underlying facts of the killing remain largely undisputed. Anthony, then 17 and a student-athlete at Frisco Centennial High School, stabbed Metcalf, a junior at nearby Memorial High School, in the chest during a confrontation that began over a seating dispute at the track meet. Witnesses at trial testified Anthony was the aggressor after Metcalf pushed him. The defense maintained Anthony acted in self-defense.
The jury deliberated for two-and-a-half hours on the sentence after the defense rested. Anthony's mother, Kayla Hayes, testified during the sentencing phase. "He's my oldest, he's my firstborn. He will always be my baby. I love him very much," she told the jury, Just The News reported.
The case generated intense public reaction from the start. Supporters rallied outside the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney, and two people were arrested outside the courthouse after the original sentencing.
With the new-trial motion denied, Anthony's legal challenge now moves to a direct appeal. The specific appellate court has not been identified in public filings. His new attorney, Russell Wilson, has pledged to pursue every available legal avenue.
For the Metcalf family, the ruling preserves the outcome the jury delivered. For Anthony's supporters, it means the arguments about an unwritten deal, a removed judge, and a defendant who never testified will have to persuade a higher court, one that reviews the written record rather than hearing live witnesses.
A 17-year-old is dead. A jury heard the evidence, weighed it, and convicted the man who stabbed him. When the system works the way it is supposed to, the verdict holds, and so far, it has.
