Everyone Is WRONG About Karmelo Anthony’s Appeal

[00:00:00][music] [music] [music] >> Grace and peace everybody. We are back.

[00:00:15]You saw the thumbnail. You saw the title. We're going to do something different. We're going to go look at >> [clears throat] >> Uncivil Law. Shout out to Kurt over at Uncivil Law, excellent content creator.

[00:00:25]He has taken the time to break down what actually is at stake with the appeals.

[00:00:30]Many people don't understand what's at stake with the appeals. And shout out to this lawyer for breaking it down and explaining it because I do think this is going to help out is going to help out a lot of people who wants to be helped out. For those people that are not going to be happy happy, they're going to still be upset. They're going to stay upset. But this right here is a tough is a tough pill to swallow pretty much for everybody cuz he has something for everyone. So let's bring it in shout out to Kurt. Let's go. Link will be down in the description.

[00:00:57]>> A jury took a look at Carmelo Anthony, decided he committed murder, and gave him 35 years. That was on a Tuesday. By Wednesday, the next day, he had already filed his appeal. Handwritten for some reason on a form he grabbed from a totally different county and then scribbled over. How professional. And in that appeal, the one where he's asking the Texas state to hand him a free lawyer, he says he's broke. Not tight on money, broke. The actual words he sworn to on the page are that he's quote penniless, destitute, and indigent, unquote.

[00:01:26]Penniless, he says. After his supporter raised, let's sit on this number for one second, over $600,000 worth of funds. So either 600 grand vanished in 14 months or someone's telling a judge a wild story in week one. And the internet, of course, has already decided which because the internet has a lot of agree from the University of replying to things. Well, here is the problem. Everyone is wrong.

[00:01:48]The GoFundMe crowd, the lock them up forever crowd, left, right, all of them because none of them has read the single thing that decides what happens next.

[00:01:55]Well, I've taken the time to and looked at the whole case. So, let's talk about what's actually going on in the Carmelo Anthony case and why the appeal is causing everyone to lose their minds over the thing they think it is, which it's not. Not even close. I'm on Civil Law, let's get uncivil about it.

[00:02:11]>> Shout out to Uncivil Law. He's uncivil.

[00:02:13]>> [music] >> He's going to keep it uncivil.

[00:02:15]>> With a quick version of the facts because if you're here, you probably already watched 40 videos about this case. There's a track meet at a high school in Frisco, Texas. It is raining.

[00:02:23]Carmelo's school shows up with a tarp instead which matters and so he ducks under a different school's tent, namely Memorial's tent, Austin Metcalf's tent.

[00:02:32]Now, they tell him to leave because it's not his team's tent. He doesn't leave.

[00:02:36]It escalates and somewhere in the middle of this all with his hand already in his backpack, he decides to say >> As his words witnesses claim Anthony said before Metcalf was stabbed, "Touch me, see what happens." Wersky argues that Anthony provoked and goaded Metcalf into touching him.

[00:02:48]>> Austin touches him in some way. Carmelo then pulls out a folding knife and puts it straight through his chest. One time, straight into the heart. And now a 17-year-old is dead over a tent and a seat in it. And the other 17-year-old who at the time was a good student, working two jobs and someone's son is going to do serious prison time over this. There is no version of this where anybody wins and I'm not going to pretend there is in order to sell you a thumbnail. This is the event. Everything the internet is actually fighting about, however, happens after it. Now, here's where the people who are screaming legal lynching didn't bother to watch the trial. There were 20-plus witnesses and the kids who were actually under the tent, Austin's teammate, and even the guy Carmelo actually knew, got up one after another and basically said the exact same thing. The prosecutor asked it point-blank, >> Wersky asked a witness, "Did Austin deserve to get stabbed?" "No, sir." "Was Austin Metcalf the aggressor?" "No, sir."

[00:03:36]>> Over and over. Teenager after teenager.

[00:03:39]Now, were they consistent in every aspect? Of course not. They contradicted each other over the details, which is to be expected. Was there one hand or two in the touching? Were the brothers standing? Was it raining at the time or not? And that's That's if you're cutting a Tik Tok. The witnesses contradict themselves. Boom, 10,000 likes. But here's the phrase I need you to tattoo somewhere because it's coming back about nine more times.

[00:03:59]A messy witness is a great closing argument, but a garbage appeal. And as for whether the knife was legal, his own lawyer admitted in closing that bringing that particular knife to school broke the rules. When the defense attorney is conceding points in his own closing, the energy in the room is not exactly leaning towards that not guilty verdict.

[00:04:16]The headline argument in this case on social media has all been about self-defense. And everyone yelling self-defense online is running the playground definition. He touched me, so I get to do anything I want. That is simply not the law anywhere. And it's not the law in Texas. Texas self-defense comes with three words bolted to it. And if you remember nothing else from this video, remember these: reasonable, necessary, and proportional.

[00:04:37]You can use deadly force, and knife is certainly deadly force, let's not insult each other, but only when you reasonably believe it's immediately necessary to stop someone else's deadly force. Now, Carmelo's dad went on TV and said the state had a proof it wasn't self-defense. And credit where he's due, that is correct. The burden is on the prosecution to disprove that it was self-defense. Of course, when he was saying that, he left off the second half of the sentence. And they did carry that burden. Because the question was never around did Austin push him. It was does a push or shove or touch from an unarmed kid justify a knife to the chest? And 12 people correctly said no. That is not lawful self-defense.

[00:05:14]>> Now, Bill Werskey goes up, prosecutor, do not let them turn a friend to a warning. He urged jurors, this is not some benign warning, this is ludicrous.

[00:05:20]>> Anthony had a secret, he had a knife that day. He was always going to come out on top that day. That is his mindset. You don't get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoke a shove. This is unjustified provoked murder.

[00:05:28]>> And then there's one other key doctrine that actually buried this defense, provocation. In Texas or pretty much any other state for that matter, if you start it, if you bait it, you don't get to do self-defense. Period. And the state's whole theory of the case was that when Carmelo Anthony said, "Touch me and see what happens." Said by a guy whose hand was already on an up >> And that's something I think many, many, many people have kind of they just ignore that that Carmelo Anthony had was said to have been the aggressor, was said to be the instigator by several of those witnesses. So, it's not just I'm saying it or one person saying it, but multiple people said he was the one that antagonized, he was the aggressor, the instigator.

[00:06:09]He's going to bring up another case that I didn't know about, but again, same thing happened there. Watch this.

[00:06:14]>> All right. That is not a warning. It's an invitation. It's bait. The judge let the jury weigh that issue over the defense objecting the entire time, and the jury went, "Yeah, that's provocation." For those of you who remember the case, this is a little bit like the Texas father and son duo where the father said, >> "Take your swing. Don't push the man.

[00:06:31]I'm going to get you. Hey, do you hear Anthony's going to kill me? Yeah, take a swing. POINT IT OUT. GO AHEAD."

[00:06:35]>> IN that case, the son was acquitted, but the father was convicted because the jury correctly ruled the father saying take your swing was a provocation, not self-defense. And this is exactly the same as to that aspect. Now, here is where I'm going to lose half the comment section because the defense's argument is not totally without merit. So, let me help present it since nobody on either side will.

[00:06:55]Carmelo Anthony was 5'8" and 130. The Metcalfs twins are 6'1", 200 plus each.

[00:07:01]So, here's one way of looking at the facts. There's a smaller kid in someone else's space, told leave it a dozen times, two huge guys in a crowd of friends right there. Is fear in that moment necessarily insane? No. It's what is he supposed to do? Wait and get hit by the bigger guy in a real argument?

[00:07:14]Yeah, it is. In self-defense law, you can look to issues like the relative age of the people. If a young person is attacking a particularly old person, the feebleness of the old person is a factor in weighing the old person's self-defense. And if you have a much taller or a much bigger person who and a much smaller person, the smaller person's lack of size or lack of heft is a relevant factor in weighing self-defense. So, it is a potentially coherent theory. It's just one that in this particular case, 12 people heard, then looked at a dead, unarmed kid with no defensive wounds, and didn't buy it beyond a reasonable doubt. That's not a railroad. That's a case that he simply lost because a jury gets to decide the facts. That exists and pretending it isn't is how you end up surprised on a Tuesday afternoon. All right, so now we must turn our attention to the appeal.

[00:07:56]The slam dunk 10 million people called out before they even finished the headline. To no one's surprise >> [snorts] >> Here's a very good point that he's going to make right here and I really want people to pay attention. He's going to break down what an appeal is and what an appeal is not and sadly there are a lot of people a lot of them that think that it's something that it's not. And it's going to hurt their feelings but it's going to be real.

[00:08:22]Let's go.

[00:08:22]>> Uh as the day after the verdict he filed his appeal and the internet detonates.

[00:08:26]He's getting a new trial they say.

[00:08:28]They're overturning. Justice is on the way.

[00:08:30]Uh no, none of that is real. An appeal is not a retrial. It's not a do-over. No one gets to recall witnesses. There's no new jury. 12 strangers do not get a second swing. An appeal is a few judges reading a cold transcript asking one deeply boring question. Did the trial court break some sort of rule? Did someone object to it at the time and did actually change the outcome? That's the entire game on appeal. You know what's not on the list? The witnesses were inconsistent. Remember our friend, great tweet but terrible appeal? On appeal the court will read all the messy testimony in the light most favorable to conviction. Remember, it's innocent until proven guilty. He's been proven guilty so presumption of innocence no longer applies. To the appeal court it's a presumption of guilty at this point and the appeal court reads all the evidence in favor of the presumption of guilt. Every contradiction that helped the defense at trial it evaporates, gone, because the jury is the finder of fact and gets to decide which facts they believe and which facts they don't. And on appeal the appellate court will assume the jury found every fact in favor of the verdict and discounted every fact against it because the presumption of innocence no longer applies. So when you read someone in the comment section arguing that the appeal works because the witnesses couldn't agree on the exact details of the push, that person should be kept a minimum of 500 ft from any courthouse and honestly any keyboard because they don't understand what they're talking about.

[00:09:43]So, you might ask, is there anything legitimate in the appeal? Well, there's one thing that comes to mind. It's the thing everyone vaguely is waving around without knowing its name. People talking about the fact that there were no black jurors. I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times. Here's what nobody told you. The defense actually did something about it. They raised what's called a Batson challenge after the Supreme Court name. The rule says that the state can't strike jurors because of race. They can't strike them because they are black. However, if they have a legitimate reason to strike them, their race is irrelevant. That's Batson. Did they strike them because of race or because of some other reason? And the defense preserved this issue. They objected on it. The judge ruled and it's in the record. That's exactly what the appeal needs and exactly what 99% of online outrage doesn't have. But, and I'm sure you felt the butt coming, the trial judge already found the race-neutral reason. And on appeal, this court second-guesses that barely.

[00:10:33]They're only going to look if the trial court was out of its mind. They're going to flip it only if it was clearly wrong.

[00:10:39]It felt like a pretext to me, bro, versus a judge who watched the whole thing happen. That's not going to work.

[00:10:44]You need something to demonstrate that the judge overlooked something clearly and evidently obvious. And again, the appellate court is going to defer to the trial court. So, as for the honest war board, the Batson issue is the best card the defense has and it's still a massive uphill climb. A person is entitled to a fair opportunity to have a mixed jury, but they're not actually entitled to a mixed jury itself. Only the fair opportunity one.

[00:11:07]Now, I know racist trial overturned is a better thumbnail, but I'm not going to hype you. I'm here to read the docket and explain the law. Now, let's slam that loop shot that we discussed at the top. The so-called penniless filing and the $625,000 worth of revenue that he raised. A lot of people out there are saying the whole thing is a scam. 600 grand and apparently it's gone. Lock the whole house up. And I get it. That is a perfectly reasonable gut reaction and a certainly allowed one on this kind of case. But, here is the facts over feeling heart. Indigency for getting a free appellate lawyer doesn't ask how much did Ahmaud Arbery's stranger send your family last year? It asks what does this specific guy have right now sitting in a prison cell with zero income. Money that was already spent for example on trial lawyers or family relocating, it's gone. If the money was simply spent foolishly, that's not fraud, that's stupidity. And the money is no longer his. A broke 19-year-old in a Texas prison can legally be indigent even after a fundraiser that's already torched. So is he lying about it? Maybe.

[00:12:00]Maybe not. Is it sketchy? Yes, more than a little bit. But here's the part that should actually make you mad, the useful kind of mad. No judge has even ruled on the issue yet.

[00:12:08]>> Correct.

[00:12:08]>> Nobody knows. And if one dollar that money is still sitting somewhere he controls, the answer might flip. So anyone handing you the verdict on this question today, left or right, is selling a video. And as for the race war, I'm not playing it the way they want because say it with me, appellate courts don't grade vibes. You want the record? Here's the record. A diverse jury with no black members but other racial diversity, a Batson challenge raised and rejected by the court who actually had command of the facts, black witnesses who said under oath it wasn't about race, and Ahmaud Arbery's father who stood up and said the same thing while strangers screamed the opposite on his behalf. That's what's in the file.

[00:12:40]You can be furious about whatever you want. I'm just not going to lie to you about the evidence to crank it up another notch. Plenty of channels will, but over here we try to stick to the facts and law. So here's where we are.

[00:12:49]The appeal is pending and everyone's certain despite that no one's read the appellate briefs yet because they don't exist yet.

[00:12:54]There are just simply [clears throat] fast gut checks, which I can already see what's half typed in your comment box to confirm that much. If you think the sentence was too harsh, cool, it doesn't matter. The appeal doesn't ask if you'd go lighter, it asks if the trial court broke a rule. Do you think he got railroaded? Cool, doesn't matter. The appeal doesn't care whether you dislike the jury. It simply asks if anyone objected to the thing that you're mad about and whether that objection legally matters. You think the appeal's a lock because the witnesses were some kind of circus? Cool, doesn't matter. And now you know exactly why. The jury is the trier of fact and is held to believe who they believe and who they don't believe.

[00:13:25]The internet wants some kind of movie.

[00:13:26]The court of appeals wants a clean transcript and preserved objections.

[00:13:29]Those are very different things. And over the next year, the free lawyer ruling, the actual brief, the bats and fights, I'll read every page so you don't have to get your law from a thumbnail. So, the appeal has been filed, but the real fight hasn't even been started. Subscribe because this case has plenty of more documents left in it. And I promise you the comment section will almost certainly get every single one of them wrong. But tell me what you think in the comment section below. Let me know if you think I got anything wrong. And don't forget to do all the YouTube-y stuff. Until next time, I've been Uncivil Law. And remember to keep it uncivil out there.

[00:13:55]Cheers. And goodbye.

[00:13:58]We got to keep it uncivil. We got to keep it uncivil.

[00:14:01]I'm I I agree with him. I love how he handled that. Sure, he stepped on my toes a little bit, but I hey, I mean that's those are the realities and the facts. The only question I have, however, is the official appeal hasn't been filed. That's the only question. And maybe I'll ask that when we speak with the Bearded Lawyer. Has the official appeal been filed? That's just a request, a statement letting you know that I want to file an appeal, but they can't file an appeal yet cuz the transcripts aren't ready yet. All that stuff hasn't been done. Now, that stuff might get done in the next couple of days or the next couple of weeks, then they can officially file an appeal, but I don't know if that if there is a a notice of appeal versus an actual filing of an appeal. That's the only question I have for Kurt. But let me know what y'all thought. Comment down below. Did Kurt hurt your feelings in any way?

[00:14:50]I'mma leave the link to the video so you can go over there and tell him, but let me know as well over here. Did he hurt your feelings? Did he step on your toes in any way?

[00:14:59]Were you offended by what he said about getting your law degree from the comment section? Let me know. I appreciate y'all for rocking with us. Thank you so much for liking the video. I'll see you real soon, and until then, grace and peace.

[00:15:11]Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the J. Witt podcast.

[00:15:14]If you enjoyed today's show, please do me a favor and hit me up with that three-piece [music] special. Like the video, subscribe, and of course share it with somebody who would also enjoy this type of content. And make sure you leave a comment because I do pin the best comments to the top. [music] So, thank you so much for tuning in today, and until next time everybody. Grace and peace.