Relity ยท ยท evidence, not verdicts
Judge Michael Chitty rejected all three grounds after a two-day hearing โ including that the trial judge told a TV station the jury "got it right."
A Texas judge has denied Karmelo Anthony a new trial, ending in half a page a case that ran for sixteen months and drew national attention. Anthony, 19, remains convicted of murder and is serving 35 years for the April 2025 stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet in Frisco.
Judge Michael Chitty issued the denial on Saturday, August 22, in a half-page order, according to the Associated Press. It followed a two-day hearing near Dallas.
The judge who denied the motion was not the judge who presided over the trial, and the reason is on the record. Trial judge John Roach ran the June proceedings that ended in Anthony's conviction. On Wednesday, August 19, visiting senior judge Sid Harle of the Fourth Administrative Judicial Region recused Roach from the post-trial proceedings. Michael Chitty, a retired Kaufman County district judge, was assigned that same day and heard the motion instead.
Anthony was 17 at the time of the offense and is now 19. He was convicted of murder in June 2026 and sentenced to 35 years.
The defense raised three grounds, and Chitty rejected all of them.
One โ the agreement that broke down. Prosecutors and defense lawyers had agreed, off the record, to keep damaging character material about both teenagers out of the trial. By the Associated Press's account, both sides held that material back because the case was already, in AP's words, "boiling with racial tensions and death threats." Anthony's attorneys told the court that prosecutors threatened to go back on that agreement just as Anthony was preparing to testify, which forced a change of strategy and ended with Anthony declining to take the stand.
Two โ the courtroom rules. The defense argued that Roach's restrictions on the courtroom limited the public's access to the proceedings.
Three โ the television interview. After the verdict, Roach spoke to a Dallas television station and said of the jury: "Whatever they say, they got it right."
Both sides put their positions on the record after the ruling. Defense attorney Russell Wilson: "Our commitment to our client has not changed. We will continue to advocate vigorously on his behalf through every lawful avenue available." Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis: "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. Every defendant has the right to appeal, and our thoughts and prayers remain with the Metcalf family."
Wilson has said the defense will appeal.
Harle's order recusing Roach is a fact; the reasoning behind it is not public in any detail, and no court has said the television interview was the cause. The sequence is suggestive โ the recusal came days after the defense raised the interview โ but sequence is not causation, and RELITY has not confirmed the grounds Harle acted on.
Chitty's order is half a page. That means the reasoning behind the denial is not public in any detail. Nobody outside the courtroom currently knows which of the three grounds he considered weakest, or whether he reached the merits of the recusal question at all.
The account of the off-the-record agreement and the threat to break it comes from Anthony's attorneys, made in a filing and at a hearing. Prosecutors have not publicly conceded that version. An off-the-record agreement is, by definition, not in the trial record โ which is part of why it is difficult to litigate.
No date has been set for an appeal, and no appellate court has docketed anything.
The first two grounds are ordinary trial-court disputes. Lawyers argue about excluded material and courtroom management in almost every serious case, and appellate courts almost never overturn on either.
The third is different in kind. A judge commenting publicly on a verdict he presided over is not a routine complaint, and the quote is not ambiguous โ "whatever they say, they got it right" is an endorsement, said out loud, to a camera, after the fact.
The legal question is narrower than it sounds. Judicial-conduct rules generally restrict what a judge may say about a pending case, and an appeal is a pending proceeding. But a comment made after a verdict is not automatically proof that the judge was biased during the trial itself, and that is the thing a defendant has to establish to win a new trial. Appearance of partiality and actual prejudice are two different tests, and the second one is much harder.
Note also what already happened on this ground: it is the only one of the three that produced a result before Chitty ever ruled. Roach was removed from the post-trial proceedings on August 19. The defense did not get a new trial out of that, but it did get the trial judge off the case โ which is more than the courtroom-access argument or the off-the-record agreement achieved.
Which is why this ground survives the denial in a way the other two probably do not. It is a self-contained, documented, on-the-record act by the judge โ the kind of issue an appellate court can examine without re-litigating the whole trial. That is not a prediction that it succeeds. It is an observation about what an appeal has left to work with.
The defense has said it will appeal; nothing has been filed publicly yet. Texas gives convicted defendants a window to file notice of appeal after a new-trial motion is resolved, so the first thing to watch for is a notice appearing on the docket rather than any substantive filing.
An appeal on these grounds would go to a Texas court of appeals and would run on a timescale of many months, not weeks. The record that appeal is built on is the trial record โ which is exactly why the off-the-record agreement is a hard argument and the on-camera interview is a comparatively easy one.
Anthony remains in custody serving the 35-year sentence. A denied new-trial motion does not pause a sentence.
Associated Press (carried by KSAT, KXII, WRAL, U.S. News & World Report) ยท CBS Texas ยท ABC News ยท The Dallas Morning News ยท NBC 5 DFW ยท Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis ยท defense attorney Russell Wilson ยท Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 3B(10)