Toby Shook, Karmelo Anthony’s other trial attorney, is set to take the stand in the hearing, which will begin at 9 a.m.
By Jamie Landers, Sally Avila Edwards, Lilly Kersh, Staff Writers
Karmelo Anthony secured a new judge for his case. Now, he’s vying for a new trial.
Retired Judge Michael Chitty is reviewing Anthony’s motion for a new trial in a hearing at the Collin County courthouse in McKinney. The proceedings, which are open to the public, began Thursday and are expected to continue into Friday.
Anthony was convicted of murder in June and sentenced to 35 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet tent in Frisco. Anthony is Black; Metcalf was white.
Two motions — one for a recusal and another for a new trial — were filed, alongside a notice of appeal, shortly after sentencing.
The motion to retry the case spanned 63 pages and several allegations, including that prosecutors backed out of a “gentleman’s agreement” at the eleventh hour, derailing the defense team’s strategy. Anthony’s lead trial attorney said in an affidavit that the agreement barred both sides from mentioning details about Anthony and Metcalf’s character and past in front of the jury.
Hearing to continue Friday
The hearing is expected to resume Friday morning at 9 a.m., when Toby Shook, Anthony’s other trial attorney, is set to take the stand. Judge Michael Chitty has until Monday to rule on whether Anthony should have a new trial; under Texas law, if he doesn’t, the motion will automatically be denied.
‘That was an icky feeling’
During cross-examination Thursday afternoon, Collin County prosecutor Bill Wirskye challenged defense attorney Mike Howard’s account of how the “gentleman’s agreement” between the prosecution and defense was reached — and ultimately collapsed.
He pointed repeatedly to the trial record, including several instances in which Howard was asked whether he had objections to how things were being handled and said he did not.
Wirskye also pressed Howard on whether he understood that the agreement was intended to avoid publicly litigating sensitive issues surrounding the case.
“That was an icky feeling,” Wirskye told Howard, “going through that motion line by line, knowing that Austin died.”
“That is what we were attempting to avoid,” Howard replied.
The exchange turned personal when Howard said while he could not know what was in Wirskye’s heart, he had difficulty understanding how an agreement designed to cover only “what happened under the tent” could have excluded Anthony’s testimony.
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter,” Howard concluded.
“It matters to me, my friend,” Wirskye said. “People’s reputations are at stake.”
“Believe me, my reputation has been dragged through the mud,” Howard said.
— Jamie Landers
‘Gentleman’s agreement’ derails strategy, defense says
Howard testified Thursday about his sworn affidavit describing the unwritten “gentleman’s agreement” between the prosecution and the defense that he said derailed the defense team’s strategy and prevented Anthony from taking the stand in his own defense.
Howard said Thursday the defense always made clear that they anticipated Anthony would testify in his own defense, and that they told District Judge John Roach Jr. that there was a 99 percent chance Anthony would take the stand.
Howard testified that he was “absolutely shocked” when the state suddenly argued that the agreement wouldn’t cover Anthony if he testified. He said that development changed the defense’s strategy making the path forward “very precarious” and ultimately leaving the defense without enough time for Anthony to decide whether to testify.
Although the trial transcript showed Anthony told Roach he had enough time to make that decision, Howard pushed back on Thursday. “He’s a scared 19-year-old in front of the judge,” Howard said.
The defense attorney also acknowledged that his sworn affidavit supporting the motion for a new trial was written before the trial transcripts were released, meaning he had to reconstruct the events from memory.
— Jamie Landers
Attorney alleges racism in Metcalf’s past
After an hourlong lunch break, lead appellate attorney Russell Wilson called Howard to the stand. Wilson asked Howard to walk the court through a motion that outlined the character-based evidence attorneys had against Metcalf and his twin brother Hunter — but withheld at trial to honor the “gentleman’s agreement.”
The motion had not been not filed in the public court docket. Howard said attorneys often delivered documents directly to Judge Roach, who kept a physical file in his chambers, as opposed to the district clerk.
The motion alleged the Metcalf twins had previously been arrested for racist graffiti, the messages including “KKK Kill all Black people,” “Heil Hitler,” an upside down cross and the N-word.
Howard said the incident was verified through an offense report and body-worn camera footage. According to the motion, Austin and Hunter Metcalf received one year of probation through the Denton County Community Supervision and Corrections Department.
The document also referenced more than 50 other allegations, including fights, assaults, suspensions and numerous messages that included racial slurs and proposed violence.
In one set of text messages between Austin Metcalf and an unnamed student during a track meet, the student wrote, “An Edgar behind our bench was talking wild,” to which Austin Metcalf responded “kill” him, according to the document.
Edgar, the document said, is slang for a “young, ghetto Hispanic boy.”
Wilson then compared the exchange to the stabbing, saying it was proposed violence against someone sitting behind Austin Metcalf, like Anthony was.
Other examples in the document included a teacher reporting that Austin Metcalf used the N-word in class and “bragged about how the coaches would not do anything because he is a starter on varsity.” The document said he followed roughly 300 fight accounts on social media.
In 2024, Austin Metcalf reportedly told his church group he was consumed by anger, his rage controlling his life, according to the document.
— Jamie Landers
Talarico’s Breakfast Club comments resurface
Thursday’s hearing has highlighted the case’s potent political repercussions, bringing renewed attention to comments Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico made on a radio program earlier this month.
The Austin state representative appeared Aug. 5 on The Breakfast Club, where he was asked what he meant when he previously called the case a tragedy.
“We’ve got a system that doesn’t serve all Americans equally,” Talarico responded. “I’m not an expert on this particular case but I know that there were no Black members of the jury, and to me that’s the only evidence you need to really prove that this system is not working for Black Texans, and so I’m going to keep doing the work I did in the statehouse trying to reform this system.”
Conservatives have criticized those comments, accusing Talarico of siding with a convicted murderer.
Talarico faces Attorney General Ken Paxton in the November general election.
— Joseph Morton
Public information officer’s sudden termination
Former Collin County Public Information Officer Derrick Jackson was the first to take the stand Thursday, called by Wilson to detail the events that led to his sudden termination during preparations for Anthony’s trial.
Jackson, who said he was let go in mid-May after inadvertently violating communication protocols, said he was tasked then with sifting through requests for media credentials, organizing staging areas and other logistics, meeting several times with Judge Roach, Wirskye, and his supervisors along the way.
When an Associated Press reporter called Jackson and asked for a trial schedule for the outlet’s planning purposes, he said he shared what information he had on the first four days.
“That wasn’t out of the norm for me,” Jackson said, explaining he was not aware the schedule could be subject to a gag order Roach imposed prohibiting anyone involved in the case from speaking publicly about it.
Following what he considered to be a standard practice of forwarding the same information to each media contact who requests it, he later sent the same email to Christopher King.
King is a content creator from Washington State and one of many spectators who waited outside the Collin County courthouse in June. King was seated in the courtroom Thursday, wearing purple in support of Anthony. He previously wrote in emails to The Dallas Morning News that Anthony was “scapegoated” and a victim of “state-sponsored lies.”
Jackson testified that Wirskye reproached him after learning King had accessed the schedule.
“He was pretty upset,” Jackson said. “He let me have it and told me where I was wrong.”
Jackson was then suspended and called to a meeting in Roach’s chambers, where Jackson testified Roach spent about six minutes rebuking him and threatened him with six months in jail for contempt.
Roach ultimately did not pursue contempt charges, Jackson said, but he was escorted from the chambers and given a document confirming his termination.
During a brief cross-examination, Wirskye noted it has become increasingly more difficult to distinguish credentialed reporters from citizen journalists and other “bad actors.”
He also told the court he never believed Jackson intentionally shared the information out of turn and was confident Jackson did not know who King was when he shared it.
— Jamie Landers
Supporters brave extreme heat
About 30 people wearing mainly purple and black gathered in spots of shade outside the courthouse by 11:30 a.m. Thursday as the temperature neared 100 degrees in the parking lot. A woman played “Victory” by Brenda Waters on a speaker and danced near the courthouse steps.
— Lilly Kersh
New details about Anthony’s past emerge
Wirskye confirmed, as Howard’s affidavit said, that the gentleman’s agreement was his idea: “I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse,” Wirskye said, “because we had that much leverage.”
Wirskye shared details that before Thursday had never been made public, including allegations that earlier the morning of the track meet, Anthony’s ex-girlfriend confided in a teacher at Frisco Centennial High School that Anthony “wouldn’t take no for an answer” and was stalking her.
Shortly after, Wirskye said that teacher got a call: A student had been stabbed to death at David Kuykendall Stadium.
Howard also referenced Anthony’s phone records in his affidavit as something the defense agreed to keep out of the courtroom and away from the jury.
But Wirskye told the court Thursday that Anthony sent two texts hours before the stabbing that read, “I’m [lowkey] on the verge.”
Wirskye said Anthony had a documented obsession with violence, fights, guns and knives. He alleged Anthony once said in a text to his then-girlfriend in 2024 that he fantasized about stabbing someone and licking the blood off the blade.
— Jamie Landers
Opening Arguments
In opening arguments, Wilson walked Chitty through the defense’s motion for a new trial, an appeal he said spans more than 40 exhibits and four volumes of material.
He accused Roach of running a “shadow docket,” and stated evidence will show “exhaustive” off-the-record proceedings in the case. According to Wilson, Anthony did not have a live hearing between the day he bonded out of jail in April 2025 and the start of jury selection in June 2026.
“I don’t know that I’ve seen a murder case that had as much off-the-record stuff,” Wilson said.
Wirskye was outwardly frustrated as he stood to respond, telling the judge it was “too cute by half” that Anthony’s lawyers would imply the restrictions they agreed to from the beginning are now to be considered violations of Anthony’s constitutional rights.
“All the things that were done saved his life,” Wirskye said, detailing the racist vitriol that erupted on social media and fueled threats against everyone involved in the case — including family members, friends, lawyers and others caught in the crossfire.
Of Wilson’s allegations of secrecy, Wirskye said such off-the-record proceedings are not unusual, adding there were court appearances that were shielded from the public so as not to expose Anthony’s whereabouts and put him in danger.
“That’s just the way we do business in Texas,” Wirskye said.
— Jamie Landers
Who is Michael Chitty?
Chitty, a retired senior judge out of Kaufman County, is presiding over Thursday’s hearing. He’s a lifelong Texan from Terrell who worked as an attorney for three decades before serving on the bench.
Gov. Rick Perry selected Chitty to be the first judge in the newly established 422nd District Court in 2004, a post he retained for nearly two decades. A Republican, Chitty won reelection four consecutive times before retiring at the end of 2020.
— Sally Avila Edwards
Courthouse scenes
By 8:30 a.m. Thursday, the parking lot of the courthouse was filling with cars, reporters and TV cameras. The Collin County sheriff’s office parked several trucks and SUVs in the loop in front of the courthouse, where Anthony supporters celebrated after Roach was recused from the case Wednesday. A handful of police stood on the steps and monitored as people walked inside.
A group played worship music from a median with a sign that read “Free hugs and prayers” as people lined up to get inside the courthouse. One group flipped their purple “Free Karmelo” shirts inside out before walking inside, since written displays of support for either side were not permitted in court.
Inside the first-floor courtroom, dozens of spectators — most wearing purple, Anthony’s favorite color, in solidarity with him — stood and raised their fists in support as the teen’s appellate team entered the room.
Before opening arguments, Chitty asked Russell Schaffner, a Collin County administrator serving as the public information officer for the hearings, to take the stand.
Chitty asked Schaffner to explain why a live feed of the hearings is only accessible in an overflow room in the courthouse and has not been made available to the general public.
“It would not be feasible due to the timeframe,” he told the court. “It takes a few weeks to set up.”
Wilson then asked Schaffner whether the option to stream the proceedings existed during the murder trial.
“It was a possibility, had a request been made,” Schaffner said.
Wednesday’s recusal
On Wednesday, San Antonio-based Administrative Judge Sid Harle ruled to recuse Roach from Anthony’s case. Roach presided over the trial in June.
While Harle said he personally believed Roach could act impartially, the judge’s post-trial statements and restrictions on public access to the trial were enough to convince Harle that Roach must step down.
Next steps
If Anthony’s lawyers are successful in their bid for a new trial, the previous murder conviction handed down from a Collin County jury would be overturned, bringing the case back to square one.
Lutrina Wright, one of the spectators waiting outside the courthouse in sweltering heat to support Anthony, said she hoped Anthony would get a trial with more witnesses and “more fairness,” she said.
Wright, who is Black, explained that she felt that racism affected how Anthony has been treated throughout the judicial process in Collin County.
She added that she empathizes with both the Anthony and Metcalf families.
“Everybody knows someone’s baby was killed,” Wright, 55, said. “We’re all sharing the sadness on both sides.”
Legal experts who previously spoke with The News said it’s highly unlikely Anthony will receive a new trial.
“They are very rarely granted,” said David Finn, a Dallas defense attorney and former criminal trial judge who is not involved in Anthony’s case.
For Anthony to succeed, Finn said he would have to prove sufficient legal error at his first trial, such as juror misconduct or serious malpractice.
Staff writers Joseph Morton and Nicole Asbury contributed to this report.
Senior Breaking News Reporter
Jamie Landers is the senior breaking news reporter at The Dallas Morning News, where she covers crime, courts and capital punishment. She is a graduate of The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, where she studied journalism and political science. Jamie previously reported for The Arizona Republic and Arizona PBS.
Staff writer
Sally Avila Edwards is an intern for The Dallas Morning News. Avila Edwards covers the latest breaking and trending news about the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in Government and English Literature. Originally from Central Texas, Avila Edwards previously reported for KXAN Austin and The Harvard Crimson.
Collin County Reporter
Lilly Kersh is a local government accountability reporter at The Dallas Morning News covering Collin County with a focus on McKinney and Plano. She graduated in 2024 from the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism and was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia.
