A jury found then 17-year-old Anthony guilty of stabbing Austin Metcalf in the heart, killing him, at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, last year. However, Anthony's legal team is appealing his conviction less than 24 hours after the 19-year-old was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Anthony is black, and Metcalf is white, but during the trial both sides claimed the case was not about race. After the verdict, that's all it was about outside the courthouse.
“What this process did is show that black lives do not matter in Collin County. This trial showed that it put emotions over the law, after Treyvon Martin and so many countless names, it has shown us that black life is not safe in Collin County,” said Minister Dominique Alexander, a spokesperson for Anthony’s family and a Black Lives Matter activist, in a clip on Newsmax, where he was also interviewed.
Many leftist politicians, celebrities and people in the community say it's another case of injustice against the African American community in the U.S.
Fox News reports Rep Jasmine Crocket (D-Texas) claimed the jury convicted Anthony because the county was upset that black people were moving there. She also claimed that out of all white jury, none were impartial. However, out of 12 jurors and six alternates, six were minorities, including Asian and Indian.
AFR talk host Jenna Ellis tells the “Today's Issues” crew there is no systemic racism in the U.S., despite what protesters claim. There is, however, systemic Marxism.
“The Left has politicized it and made it about race, which is just yet another example of the cultural Marxism that is implicit in our nation,” Ellis says.
She applies the Left’s ideology to this case.
“Karmelo Anthony, simply because of the color of his skin, is a victim regardless of his life choices to murder another young man, and Austin Metcalfe, because of his skin color being white, is an oppressor and therefore can't be a victim,” Ellis states.
Ellis says the defense will argue on appeal that Anthony is a victim of racism, which they will claim is infused into the systems.
“If you are in the oppressed category, you are perpetually the victim, regardless of whether or not you are in fact an aggressor of harm,” Ellis says.
Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at The Lawfare Project, went on Ellis’ morning show, saying that the problem is with the culture around teaching the youth about oppression that is to blame for the outrage from the public.
“A lot of people grew up understanding that if you yell loudly enough, if you demand your rights loudly enough, if you assert a minority status loudly enough, you can get away with anything. The rules don't apply to you because you are special,” Filitti states.
He also gives a rather simple lesson to parents on what to tell their kids, conveying that this case was not about race but about right and wrong.
“You don't take a knife to school. It's never acceptable to pull a knife and stab someone in the heart. That's morally and legally wrong,” Filitti says.
