By The Masses Editorial Board
FRISCO, Texas — The sentencing of Karmelo Anthony to 35 years in prison has become a flashpoint in the struggle against the reactionary legal system of the United States and its oppression of national minorities. Anthony, a New Afrikan teenager from Frisco, was convicted of murder June 9 in the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf, another Frisco teenager, after a confrontation at a high school track meet in April 2025. The case has been handled by the courts, the bourgeois media and reactionaries as political spectacle while executing the legal lynching of a New Afrikan youth. Its purpose has been to strip Anthony of the right to self-defense, while casting draconian punishment on a teenager as justice.
Anthony and Metcalf were both 17 at the time of the incident. The track meet in Frisco was interrupted by rain, and Anthony, whose team did not have the same shelter, entered another team’s tent. Coaches testified at trial that sharing tents between teams is not uncommon during severe weather. After Anthony entered the tent, several Memorial High School students confronted him and told him to leave. Witnesses said Metcalf and Anthony began shoving each other, and testimony indicated Metcalf, who was physically larger than Anthony, initiated the physical altercation.
From the beginning, the state worked to strip the incident of its social and physical context. Anthony told state authorities he was protecting himself and that Metcalf had “put his hands on” him. The defense argued that Metcalf had no legal right to use force to remove him from a public place. Prosecutors dismissed Anthony’s self-defense claim, reducing a chaotic confrontation to a one-sided narrative that turned his fear and attempt to protect himself into the basis for decades in prison.
A Collin County jury found Anthony guilty of murder June 9. After about 2.5 hours of sentencing deliberations, the jury sentenced him to 35 years in prison and rejected the sudden passion claim, which could have reduced the sentencing range. Anthony was transferred to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice facility shortly after sentencing.
The jury that condemned Anthony had no New Afrikan members. All prospective New Afrikan jurors were struck from the jury pool, despite Frisco being about 10% New Afrikan and Texas being about 12% New Afrikan.
As the trial unfolded, reactionary forces gathered around the case and sought to turn Anthony into a symbol of criminality. Jake Lang, an infamous fascist provocateur, was charged with making a terroristic threat after allegedly threatening to kill Anthony. Lang was in Frisco during the trial, where hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Collin County courthouse. Lang told a local rally Anthony should be lynched.
Reactionary vigilantes and killers have repeatedly been exonerated in the name of self-defense. Kyle Rittenhouse, George Zimmerman and Daniel Penny became symbols of an order which de-facto legalizes pro-state violence. Anthony was offered no such mercy. His fear was criminalized. His survival was turned into guilt. His status as a minor, total lack of prior offenses and immediate statement that he acted to protect himself did not save him from the full weight of the Old State.
Anthony is now appealing his conviction with the involvement of a team of high-profile civil rights attorneys working pro-bono.
Anthony’s conviction and sentence must be opposed not only because he maintains his innocence and is pursuing an appeal, but because the case is part of the broader system of national oppression imposed on New Afrikan people. The demand for justice for Karmelo Anthony cannot be separated from the struggle against police terror, the carceral apparatus, reactionary courts, the bourgeois press and the continued rule of the New Afrikan Nation as an internal colony of the United States. His appeal must be supported, and the campaign against him must be exposed as part of the Old State’s machinery of national oppression.
Find the legal site for Karmelo Anthony here.
