I do think he should serve time, at least 10 years, but not anywhere close to 35.
He’ll be eligible for parole at 17 and a half. Whether he gets it will depend on his behavior and how effective his representative is at the parole hearing.
Assuming good behavior, he won’t serve anywhere close to 35 years.
I suppose with that situation it seems more reasonable.
This is completely inconsistent with Texas law.
In Texas, all deliberate homicides are called “murder.”
“Manslaughter” is the act of causing a human being to die through reckless behaviour.
Most other places too I think? IANAL but long familiarity with the whodunit genre has conditioned me to think of intentional but unpremeditated heat-of-the-moment-type attacks as second-degree murder or similar.
I think part of the issue here is that Texas is unusual compared to most states. In Texas, juries can decide the prison sentence even in non‑capital felony cases like murder. In most of the country, juries only handle sentencing in death‑penalty trials; everything else is handled by judges.
Texas also tends to have longer prison sentences overall. Some of that comes from the state’s broader sentencing ranges, but some of it likely comes from the jury‑sentencing system itself. A jury that has never sentenced anyone before is more vulnerable to emotion in high‑intensity cases — like a student stabbing another student — than a judge who does this every day and has a sense of what typical sentences look like. So the combination of wide sentencing ranges and jury‑driven punishment probably contributed to Anthony’s long prison sentence.
And yes, part of this is simply Texas’s political culture, which historically favors tough sentencing. But jury sentencing adds an extra layer of unpredictability and emotional weight that most other states don’t have, and that may help explain why Texas outcomes often look more severe than the national norm.
Many other places have a version of manslaughter called voluntary manslaughter, in which killing is deliberate, but certain mitigating factors are deemed to be present. Texas has no such thing, although it does allow similar mitigating circumstances to be raised at sentencing for murder.
The saga continues, as long as there’s money, I guess.
I’m amused by this:
The defense’s motion doesn’t argue that Anthony is innocent. Instead, it argues that his trial was conducted in a way that violated his constitutional rights.
That’s a description of every appeal ever, because that’s literally what an appeal is in the American justice system. You can’t appeal a verdict.
I wonder if that’s a disclaimer they have to throw into every single report they ever write for an appellate case.
The Fox article is short on details; here are some new ones.
Note:
The Texas prosecutor who oversaw Karmelo Anthony ‘s conviction in a deadly stabbing at a high school track meet said Thursday that both sides had agreed to hold back evidence that risked further inflaming a case already boiling with racial tensions and death threats…
Anthony is Black; Metcalf was White. Anthony once sent a text fantasizing about stabbing someone, and Metcalf had a history of fighting and using racist language, prosecutor Bill Wirskye said. Both were details that did not come up during the trial…
The prosecutor said he agreed not to use evidence that showed Anthony had an obsession with guns and knives and that he was angry on the morning of the stabbing. “He went there that day spoiling for a fight,” Wirskye said about the day of the track meet…
Howard, Anthony’s trial attorney, said the defense team had information showing that Metcalf had used racial slurs in the past and had bullied Black classmates…
That is quite unusual.
Or, you know, while the defendant’s right to a fair trial was compromised by some backroom deal between the attorneys.
It sounds like the defense attorney made a strategic decision that may or may not have been a good decision. While I’m not sure if that would justify a retrial, making such decisions is why we have an appeal process. I’ve certainly got no problem with any defendant exercising their legal options.
I was commenting on nearwildheaven’s bullshit “The saga continues, as long as there’s money, I guess.”
And I’m just lending you moral support. You were correct.
Racists come out of the woodwork is already in the thread title.
Russell Wilson, one of Anthony’s attorneys, expressed disappointment with Chitty’s decision.
I’m not sure I’d hire a recently-retired quarterback as my lawyer even if he won a Super Bowl over a decade ago.
Maybe they met when Anthony was with the Knicks.