Karmelo Anthony Sentenced to 35 Years. Civil Rights Attorney Lee Merritt Breaks Down What Comes Next

Karmelo Anthony has been sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for the 2025 stabbing death of Austin Metcalf at a Frisco track meet. Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt,  who lives in Frisco, Texas — joins Mimi Brown to break it all down. What thirty-five years actually means under Texas law and parole rules. The politics of Collin County and why this verdict landed the way it did in this specific community. The decisions made inside the courtroom that the appeals team is going to be looking at — and what the road forward looks like. 

From the Black Effect Podcast Network.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's Thursday, June eleventh, and on today's episode A Front Page,
we talked to civil rights attorney Lee Merritt about the
sentencing phase of the Carmelo Anthony trial. I'm well, thank
you for having me, absolutely so, I really want to
jump into this Carmelo Anthony case. Carmelo Anthony has now

(00:25):
been sentenced to thirty five years. From a legal standpoint,
what does this sentence tell you?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
This sentence tells me everything that I need to know
about the Texas legal system. I've been prosecuting police officers
for wrongful death cases civily and criminally throughout the state
of Texas for the last decade. This is, in fact,
not the worst sentence that I've seen, the most significant
sentence that I've seen, but this is three times the
most significant sentence that I've seen for murder. It tells

(00:52):
us where we are, and it's very sad.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
You know, I know you're familiar with the town and
you're familiar with this case from the beginning. Give us
some what should people understand about this community where all
of this happened.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
This took place in Frisco, Texas, which is just north
of Dallas. It's probably one of the most conservative jurisdictions
or counties in the state of Texas, one of the
red estates in the country. From the beginning with this is,
in fact, just two seventeen year olds. I have teenagers
in this community. This is not a school that is

(01:25):
often involved in violence, or a school district that's often
involved in violence. This is Carmelo was a honor roll student,
no prior criminal activity, no violence, And this event really
took this community by storm in the sense that no
one saw it coming. This is not the kind of
conflict that we see in this community all the time,

(01:47):
but it immediately became racialized, and their white supremacist groups
immediately began calling for the lynching of Carmelo Anthony. The
Black Lives Matter group immediately began saying that he was
completely justified it spending their own narrative. And it was
really unfortunate to see how much of this played outside

(02:08):
of court and how much those sentiments fell into what.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Happened in the courtroom, you know, And speaking of what
happened inside the courtroom, I know you've been following this
trial or you know enough to know the defense, the prosecution,
both sides a little bit what are your thoughts on
the way this whole case played out.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
I think that from the beginning, the prosecution was over
zealous in going for a murder one charge. Murder one
means murder with malice with af Ford thought, that means
that's not a heat of the moment. This is not
a response. Carmelo said, it was self defense. All the
evidence that we saw says that Austin Metcalf, the victim,

(02:51):
was the initial aggressor, and so I would have liked
to see both a prosecution pursue more realistic charges based
on the facts that we saw, and then I would
have liked to see the defense take a completely different tact.
I think that we went to. When I say we,
I think the defense went too public too soon. I
think that they did not have their narrative straight in

(03:12):
order to prove self defense. It's what they should have
been establishing, both in the courtroom and outside of the courtroom,
that it was reasonable for a very small Carmelo Anthony
to be intimidated to fear serious bodily injury from two
large individuals. Instead, what we had was a victim blame
game that I often see in reverse when a white

(03:37):
officer kills a black person, I initially see a character
assassination of that person, and I saw our community, the
black community, try to do the same thing, a character
attack on Austin. But Austin was not on trial, Carmelo was.
And I don't think it was handled well.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, you know, and before this trial even started, social
media had already picked sides. How much of public opinion
do you think shape a case like this.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
The way our legal system is set up, the public
opinion should not come into the courtroom at all. It's
just not the way it happens. For example, offer Carmelo
a historically high bail amount of over a million dollars,
and of course it picked in all white jury, something
that we've been seen in this country since Emmit tills

(04:26):
lynching and the criminal charges against the men who were
responsible for his murder. And then we saw a lackluster defense,
a defense that only put up one character witness at
the sentencing phase, six witnesses altogether, no expert witnesses, and
in my opinion, no real effort to win this case.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
I was literally just getting ready to ask you if
you thought the defense did enough to humanize Carmelo Anthony
in front of the jury before the sentencing, and now
that we have the sentencing, we know what that is.
But you know a lot of that starts during the trial.
And clearly it seems as if the defense did not
do enough to humanize this young man.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
I don't know what their strategy was to humanize them.
So that's a responsibility for every defense attorney out there.
And if they knew, and it was their decision to
make that they didn't feel like Carmelo Anthony would have
made a good witness on the stand, then it would
have been essential for them to call someone else that

(05:26):
can humanize him, that can put this situation in context,
that will do this in this jurisdiction for this jury
to bring it home for them. And like I said,
it's not that they failed to do it. I don't
think they ever attempted. They never attempted to make him
a sympathetic figure that was worthy of self defense that

(05:46):
all citizens have a right to do.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
You think the defense team underestimated how big this case
would eventually get.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
So these attorneys I'm actually familiar with. These attorneys were
involved in the defense of Roy Oliver for the murder
of Jordan Edwards in twenty seventeen. These are prominent criminal
defense attorneys in the Dallas County area. They had to
understand that there will be a lot of attention and
eyeballs on this case. I think that they made the

(06:16):
mistake of believing that the court could handle it. And
this is how the court handled it. They said, no
cameras in the room. There will be no cameras in
the court room. There was very low publicity. A lot
of the video evidence that we knew was out there
in this case was not made available to the public,
and that should have given the defense some consternation. They

(06:37):
should have been intimidated by the idea that the prosecutor
and the court was able to essentially try this case
in a black box. We need public eyes on this. Otherwise,
places like Colin County who are still stuck in the
nineteen fifties and Jim Corp segregation, that kind of atmosphere
will show up in the senenc and I think that's

(06:57):
what we saw here.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
We know that Carmelo was sentenced thirty five years seventeen
and a half years. He will be eligible for probation.
You know and I know that you are not a
defense attorney, but you know, just from your perspective, what's next.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Let me be the first to say the phrase ineffective
assistance of council. That is the most popular rounds for
appealing this kind of conviction, and here the assistance of
council was completely ineffective. That's why it only took the
jury three hours to deliberate on the conviction. And that's
why we only saw one character witness, the defendant's mother,

(07:34):
during the sentencing phase. So there's strong appellate ground here.
And what strikes me the most, because I've been doing
so much work in the Dallas Fort Worth area that's
where this case took place, is that the conviction of
Roy Oliver for killing fifteen year old Jordan Edwards by
pointing a high power rifle at his car and blowing
his head off was fifteen years. That's the most that

(07:56):
we've ever seen a copy convicted for in the Dallas
County area. Aaron Dean murdered a Tatiyana Jefferson in her home.
He got eleven years. Amber Geiger murdered both from Jah
in Dallas County the same courts in his home while
eating a bowl of ice cream. She received ten years.
That means all three of those people, their sentences together

(08:18):
don't make the thirty five years that Carmelo got. That's
if that's not a direct demonstration that there is something
imbalanced here. I don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
That's a really good point, you know, and I want
to I know that there's we cannot ignore politics. And
I know that you are. You live in the area,
You're familiar with the politics in that area. Do you
think that that played into any of what we're seeing?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, Unfortunately, I think that the black community was punished
for their voice here. I think that Carmelo, I should
say more accurately, was punished for the political underpinnings of
this case. The prosecutors wanted to send a message to
this individual. They weren't dealing with in my opinion, they
weren't dealing with Carmelo as a person, as a who

(09:03):
had never committed a criminal offense. They didn't go after
him as someone who was deserving of the benefit of
the doubt. I think because of the political nature of
this case, because of when it took place, in the
racial tension surrounding it, the prosecutors chose the side, and
they chose the side of white supremacy.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
And lastly, Lias somebody you know from that community, how
has this case impacted you personally? I know you have
children in the area. You know, I know you watched
it play out from beginning to end. You know, talk
to me about your feelings as an individual from that
community watching something like this happen, you know where you live.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
As a father, I'm always concerned about the violence that
any of our youth faced. I sympathized with Austin Metcalf
and his family, sympathized with Carmelo Anthony in his family.
What I'm really concerned about is that the myth of
progress that this community has been moving forward for the
past decade or since I've been working here, prior to

(10:04):
the work that I've been doing here, that this community
in terms of racial relations and fairness and justice is
getting better. And so a lot of people in our
community would have pointed it to the conviction of Amber
Geiger for the murder of both of them, or a Tatiana,
or Erandean for the murder of a Tatiana or those
other murders that I talked about in those convictions to say, hey,
we're moving the needle. But this quickly reminds us just

(10:26):
one murder, which wiped out all of those those years,
reminds us that we're not moving forward. I think that's
very frustrating for the black community here, and more importantly,
I think it radicalizes certain aspects of the white community.
The men and women who were there to support Austin
Medcalf were not peaceful Christians. These were people who were

(10:46):
saying he should be lynched, he should be hung outside
of the courtroom, that we shouldn't bother with the judicial
process at all. Those are the kind of people who
are empowered by the sentence.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
That's heartbreaking. Well, Lee, we'll have to leave it there.
We'll continued to watch this case and how it plays out.
I Mimi Brown, and this is Front Page. This podcast
was brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network.
M