Attorneys for Karmelo Anthony appeal his murder conviction in track meet stabbing

Attorneys for Karmelo Anthony filed an appeal Tuesday and requested a new trial for the former student-athlete convicted in the fatal stabbing of another student at a Texas track meet.

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A jury sentenced Anthony, 19, to 35 years in prison after convicting him last month of the murder of Austin Metcalf at a meet in Frisco, Texas, a Dallas bedroom community. Both Anthony and Metcalf were 17 at the time of the killing.

Anthony’s new attorneys, who did not represent him at the trial, said in their filings that the court erred when it restricted public access to the trial, violating Anthony’s rights.

They also appealed on the grounds that the state and defense had an unwritten agreement to exclude certain character and “extraneous-offense” evidence from the trial, but that prosecutors repudiated the agreement, which denied Anthony the right to testify on his own behalf.

The attorneys criticized the speed at which the judge conducted the trial, including a court date on a Saturday when several defense witnesses were unavailable.

“When the moment came for the Defendant to make the most consequential decision of the trial, whether to waive his Fifth Amendment privilege and testify, the Court allotted the defense ten minutes to counsel a nineteen-year-old through it and denied counsel’s request for additional time,” the attorneys stated.

In a separate filing, the attorneys demanded that state District Court Judge John Roach be removed from the case because he gave an interview after the trial to Dallas TV station WFAA and expressed personal opinions about the jury’s verdict, the fairness of the trial and correctness of his own rulings.

The attorneys stated that, by participating in the interview, Roach violated the state’s judicial conduct and standards code on appearance of objectivity.

According to Anthony’s attorneys, some of the judge’s “problematic” comments include agreeing to the correctness of the jury’s verdict, saying “whatever they say ... they get it right.” Roach also commented on Anthony being “a nice young man” who “understands today ... the consequences of committing a crime like ... he did.”

The attorneys stated in the recusal request that in the WFAA interview, the judge defended the selection of the jury, which did not include a single Black person, and that in a statement to Fox News, Roach defended his ruling on media access to the courtroom.

Roach also wrote a signed public letter published on the website of Collin County, where the court and Frisco are located, that he addressed to the “Collin County Family.” In the letter, Roach refers to his work on the trial as “one of the great honors of my judicial career” and thanked those who worked to ensure the process was conducted fairly, Anthony’s attorneys stated.

“A judge who publicly memorializes the trial as concluded, and publicly pronounces the process fair, while still holding the authority to grant a new trial, signals to the reasonable observer that he regards the matter as closed,” the attorneys wrote in the filing.

Roach’s comments, coupled with the fact that he imposed a gag order during the trial on any commentary by any other participants, “sharpens rather than softens the appearance that the Court no longer sits as a neutral arbiter of the post-trial proceedings that remain before it,” the attorneys wrote.

But while the judge has granted interviews and written about the trial, he has sealed the entire court file of the trial and has only allowed Anthony’s attorneys to view it on condition they not share what was observed “leaving the file only available in chambers,” the attorneys stated, adding that they did not agree to the condition.

Metcalf was fatally stabbed on April 2, 2025, as the track teams of Anthony’s Centennial High School and Metcalf’s Memorial High School participated in a districtwide meet in Frisco.

Anthony admitted to the stabbing, but his legal team argued he acted in self-defense under the pressure of physical intimidation, after he sat in the bleachers under the tent of rival high school Memorial and was confronted by members of its track team and told to leave. Prosecutors rebutted that depiction of events, saying it was Anthony who threatened Metcalf.

A high-profile group of appellate, civil rights and criminal defense attorneys teamed up to represent Anthony pro bono on his appeal soon after his conviction and sentencing. The case drew national attention because Metcalf was white and Anthony is Black, which drew heated debate on social media.

The six attorneys of the legal team include former Dallas County prosecutor Russell Wilson; criminal defense attorney Michael Ware; attorney Gary Bledsoe, who is also the Texas NAACP president; Brooke Cluse of Ben Crump Law; Sean Daredia; and Justin A. Moore.

CORRECTION (July 7, 2026, 8:10 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated Karmelo Anthony’s age. He is 19, not 17.