Mother Jones
Karmelo Anthony and the Futility of Claiming Self-Defense While Black
Last spring, during a track meet at a Texas high school, 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony stabbed and killed Austin Metcalf, a white student and fellow athlete from a rival school, during an argument. Whether or not Anthony killed Metcalf wasn’t up for discussion: Anthony had admitted his guilt, and there were several witnesses present during the altercation.
The question at the center of Anthony’s trial was whether or not the Black teen was acting in self-defense. Texas is one of 31 states with “Stand Your Ground” laws that allow people to use reasonable force, including deadly force, against an assailant under certain circumstances.
Similar laws have been invoked in several high-profile cases across the country, including the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, where George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, was acquitted after claiming he shot the 17-year-old in self-defense. Zimmerman outweighed Martin and initiated the encounter; Metcalf was also larger than Anthony and the first to engage.But more than a decade later, Anthony would not be given that same judicial grace.
On Tuesday, a jury convicted Anthony, now 19 years old, of murder. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison. There wasn’t a single Black person on the jury—every Black potential juror was struck before trial. The case has reignited a decades-long conversation, both on and off social media: In the US criminal justice system, who do “Stand Your Ground” laws protect?
Civil rights activists, celebrities, and politicians have expressed outrage at the case, with some saying that Anthony’s conviction highlights a clear double standard in self-defense claims in the United States: If a white person kills a Black person, courts (and white juries) are more likely to rule the killing justified than if the situation were reversed.
Daniel Penny snuck up behind an innocent Black man who never touched anyone, and choked him to death while claiming self defense. This happened in New York that has some of the strictest self-defense laws and a duty to retreat. Penny was still acquitted & paraded around like a… pic.twitter.com/JA6eGwL6Nb
— Tariq Nasheed
(@tariqnasheed) June 10, 2026
And the data backs that up.
According to a 2021 study from Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates against gun violence, homicides are deemed justified more often, in nearly every state, when the shooter is white and the victim is Black. A study from the Urban Institute found that homicides with a Black shooter and a white victim were ruled justified self-defense in a little more than 1 percent of cases. For a white shooter and Black victim, the figure jumps to 11.4 percent.
The response to Anthony’s conviction certainly hasn’t been helped by the far-right mouthpieces and conservative media figures who have invoked the case to justify blatantly racist rhetoric. Jake Lang, a far-right influencer who rose to prominence for participating in the January 6 insurrection, stood outside the Frisco courtroom in the days leading up to the verdict, spewing hateful rhetoric and posting it for his 169,000 Instagram followers to see.
I cannot say whether or not Anthony was acting in self-defense, but I can say that, while living in a country that has made the likes of Kyle Rittenhouse famous, I understand the Black community’s frustration.