Prosecutors fighting to preserve Karmelo Anthony's murder conviction displayed phone messages, photographs, and school records referencing knives, guns, and fights, evidence kept from the jury under a disputed oral deal that is now the centerpiece of a new-trial hearing in McKinney, Texas.
The hearing, presided over by Retired District Judge Michael Chitty after the original trial judge was removed for appearing partial, has forced both sides to answer for an unwritten agreement that may have cost a 19-year-old defendant his chance to take the stand in his own defense. Chitty faces a Monday deadline under Texas rules: if he does not grant the motion by then, it is denied by operation of law, and Anthony's direct appeal moves forward.
Anthony was convicted of murder by a Collin County jury in June and sentenced to 35 years in prison for stabbing and killing Austin Metcalf, a 17-year-old junior at Memorial High School in Frisco, during an altercation at a Frisco track meet. He was transferred to the Pack Unit near Navasota under Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody. His defense team now argues his constitutional rights were violated on multiple fronts, from the motion demanding a new trial and the judge's removal to claims that courtroom-access restrictions violated his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial and that jury instructions limited jurors' ability to weigh his self-defense claim.
At the center of the hearing is an agreement between the original defense team and prosecutors to keep character evidence away from the jury. No one put it in writing. And when it mattered most, the final day of trial, when Anthony was weighing whether to testify, the two sides discovered they did not agree on what the deal actually covered.
Former lead defense attorney Mike Howard testified Thursday that he understood the arrangement to allow Anthony to testify so long as his testimony stayed focused on the confrontation under the tent at the track meet. But under cross-examination, Howard acknowledged the lawyers never expressly agreed on whether a testifying defendant fell within the scope of the deal. He said he could not say whether prosecutors acted in bad faith.
Former defense attorney Toby Shook, testifying Friday, backed Howard's account. He said the original defense team always expected Anthony to take the stand in support of his self-defense claim. Shook told the court he was taken aback when prosecutors raised the issue on the trial's final day, warning that Anthony's testimony could open the door to the very character evidence both sides had agreed to exclude.
Anthony chose silence. Shook testified that Anthony ultimately decided not to testify because he feared prosecutors would "find a reason to open the door" to that evidence. For a defendant claiming self-defense, a claim that hinges on explaining the fear he felt and why he believed force was necessary, that silence may have been decisive.
Criminal defense attorney Clint Broden, who is not involved in the case, told Fox News Digital that an unwritten agreement affecting whether a defendant can testify is "almost unheard of" in a murder case. He added that it is "extremely hard" to win a self-defense case without the defendant taking the stand. Broden said the defense's larger problem may be that the agreement was never put on the record, leaving the lawyers without a clear way to resolve their differing interpretations before trial.
After the defense rested shortly before noon Friday, lead prosecutor Bill Wirske took the stand as the prosecution's first witness, and then showed the court what the jury never saw. Prosecutors displayed phone messages, photographs, and school disciplinary records they attributed to Anthony. The materials painted a picture far removed from the self-defense narrative the defense had built at trial.
Among the items: an October 2024 message prosecutors said Anthony sent about stabbing someone and licking blood from a blade. Other messages attributed to Anthony referenced guns, knives, and starting fights. Photographs prosecutors said showed him holding firearms were also displayed. School records, prosecutors said, documented fights and altercations involving Anthony before the killing. As previously reported, these materials have become a focal point of the hearing.
All of it had been kept from the jury under the oral agreement. Wirske argued that the agreement was mutual and that both sides were aligned on the need to keep character evidence out of the trial. But he testified that the state did not believe the agreement applied to Anthony's testimony, a directly contradictory reading from the defense's understanding.
Wirske also acknowledged under cross-examination that the lawyers never discussed the details of what the agreement would allow if Anthony testified. He said both sides knew Anthony might take the stand in a self-defense case, but prosecutors believed they would first need to work through the limits of his testimony before that happened.
Defense attorney Wilson introduced a continuing legal education presentation that Wirske himself had used in training courses on self-defense cases. One slide in the presentation advised defense lawyers that the client "(probably) needs to testify." Shook agreed during testimony that a defendant's testimony is often important in a self-defense case, a point that cuts directly against the prosecution's position that the oral agreement was never meant to cover Anthony's time on the stand.
The irony is hard to miss: the lead prosecutor's own training materials acknowledged the near-necessity of defendant testimony in self-defense cases, yet the prosecution's reading of the unwritten deal effectively prevented Anthony from doing exactly that. Whether that gap amounts to a constitutional violation is now Chitty's call.
The hearing itself only exists because Judge John Roach, who presided over Anthony's trial, was removed from remaining trial-court proceedings earlier this week. Judge Sid Harle found that a reasonable outside observer could question whether Roach appeared impartial after the judge publicly said the jury "got it right" and defended several of his trial decisions. A judge publicly endorsing a verdict while post-trial motions are still pending is the kind of conduct that erodes confidence in the process, and Harle acted accordingly.
Shook testified that during a break on the final day of trial, Roach told the lawyers he could not enforce the unwritten agreement and would rule on any objections based on the evidence presented at trial. That left the defense facing a choice: put Anthony on the stand and risk the character evidence flooding in, or keep him off and hope the jury believed the self-defense claim without hearing from the defendant himself. The unwritten deal at the center of this hearing had effectively boxed them in.
Chitty, the retired judge now overseeing the hearing, questioned both sides about whether the agreement remained in place when Anthony was considering testifying. Wirske testified that prosecutors were still willing to honor it but feared that testimony from Anthony or his mother could inadvertently open the door to character evidence. That fear, shared or not, became the mechanism that silenced the defendant.
Both Wirske and Howard testified about what they described as an unprecedented wave of threats, doxxing, swatting incidents, and online misinformation surrounding the case. Those threats influenced more than just courtroom security. Paper filings during the original trial were kept with Judge Roach rather than in the court's usual online system, a departure prosecutors said was driven by fears that information could be used to target people involved in the case.
Wirske denied that the arrangement amounted to a secret file. He testified that the materials remained available through the court but were handled differently because of the threat environment. He said the threat level dictated the security precautions and that lawyers on both sides shared concerns for Anthony's safety and the safety of witnesses. The arrests outside the Collin County Courthouse after Anthony's sentencing underscored just how volatile the atmosphere around this case had become.
Howard testified that the defense discussed waiving some public-trial access because of security concerns but that no Sixth Amendment waiver was made on the record. He said the decision not to use an overflow room was tied to technology concerns, not a specific security threat. Anthony's motion for a new trial argues those courtroom-access restrictions violated his constitutional right to a public trial, a separate ground from the testimony dispute, but one that adds weight to the defense's claim that the trial was compromised from multiple directions.
Under Texas rules, Chitty must rule on the new-trial motion by Monday. If he does not grant it, the motion is denied by operation of law and Anthony's direct appeal continues through the appellate courts. The stakes could not be clearer: either Anthony gets a second chance to present his self-defense claim, this time, presumably, with the right to testify, or he remains in prison serving a 35-year sentence while his appeal works through the system.
Fox News Digital reached out to Anthony's defense team for comment but did not receive a response. The GiveSendGo fundraiser that had raised $625,000 for Anthony's defense was pulled after his conviction, raising questions about the resources available for the ongoing fight.
What remains undisputed is this: a murder defendant claiming self-defense never told the jury his side of the story, and the reason traces back to a handshake deal that two groups of lawyers remember differently. The jury convicted without hearing from the one person who could explain why he believed he had to act. Whether that silence was a tactical choice or a constitutional violation is a question only Chitty can answer now, and the clock is running.
When the rules of a murder trial rest on a deal nobody wrote down, the system has already failed someone. The only question left is who.
