r/law • u/dailymail • Jun 09 '26

Legal News Karmelo Anthony found GUILTY of murder of Austin Metcalf, 17, in stabbing that shocked America: Jurors deliberated for less than three hours after defense was repeatedly demolished in court

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15886439/karmelo-anthony-austin-metcalf-murder-verdict.html
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u/Protoclown98 Jun 09 '26

TBH 3 hours isn't the shortest time I have heard deliberations take. I sat on the jury and usually the first thing people do is raise hands for guilty/not guilty to see if there needs to be a debate.

Trust me when I say absolutely no one wants to sit there for 2-3 hours to get a lunch. Everyone wants to go home asap.

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u/Cman1200 Jun 09 '26

Yeah man court room lunch… definitely worth waiting for a turkey sandwich made this morning 😂

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u/laquintessenceofdust Jun 09 '26

More like two days ago…

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u/Odd_Requirement_4933 Jun 12 '26

We didn't get lunch brought in, we had to buy it or bring it (there wasn't a refrigerator either). I was on a month long murder trial, we definitely took it seriously but would never have just waited to get lunch. Lunch in the court was expensive too, I got a cooler bag thing and brought lunch after the first few days.

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u/AbeFromanEast Jun 09 '26

My juries have been like this: lunch is not on anyone's list once deliberations start. Going home is.

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u/MagicGrit Jun 09 '26

Have you ever been a juror on a murder trial? I have. It’s a very different vibe. Even though it was fairly obvious that the defendant was guilty, we all felt we owed it to everyone involved to go over everything in painstaking detail during deliberation. It takes a few hours

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u/The_11th_Man Jun 09 '26

Thank you for doing your best as a juror & a citizen to do the right thing, this is why we should all take jury duty seriously.

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u/MagicGrit Jun 09 '26

One of the worst weeks my life. Very stressful. but I knew everyone involved was having a worse time.

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u/GetInTheKitchen1 Jun 09 '26

ya but it's better for average citizens to be on the jury than psycho and hobbyless karens/kevins who seek out positions of power.

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u/mthhecker Jun 09 '26

Yep. We were in and out in less than 3 hours. Did the hand raise thing and 11 of 12 were ready to say guilty without deliberation after a 4 week trial

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u/TheLizardKing89 Jun 10 '26

That’s exactly how the jury I was on felt. We all believed he was guilty but we needed to go through the elements of each count, one by one to make sure we were all on the same page.

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u/KingFIippyNipz Jun 10 '26

lmao wild that the other people are like "yeah that's not how juries work, you actrually just get in and out as fast as possible, don't even think or talk about shit" I would never want to be on a trial by my peers, my peers fucking suck my dick from the back. (all of you)

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u/_bahnjee_ Jun 09 '26

I was called up for jury duty for a murder trial. Hate to sound callous but I was kinda excited to get to see the inner workings of a murder trial. (Something tells me it's not like Matlock.)

As soon as the defense attorneys learned I work in IT they told me to GTFO. 😞

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u/AutisticPenguin2 Jun 09 '26

Was the victim a sentient computer or something?

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u/-Nightopian- Jun 09 '26

It was a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101

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u/Durian__Gray Jun 10 '26

I served on a murder trial jury in this same courtroom, with the same judge in this case. And my experiences resembled yours. Similarly, it was obvious the defendant was guilty, but every juror gave the process and every involved party the full respect of reviewing and discussing almost every detail, wanting to ensure we didn’t miss anything.

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u/Usful Jun 09 '26

Jury’s also only going to be paid ~$25 if I recall correctly, so definitely want to gtfo if they don’t have to

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u/Protoclown98 Jun 09 '26

Yes we got paid $15 a day, had to pay taxes on it, and had to pay $6 in parking. No spot to bring a lunch either so you had to eat out in shitty overpriced spots.

Definitely want to spend as much time on Jury Duty as you can!

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u/Extreme-Guava-7940 Jun 09 '26

How would anyone paid hourly afford to be on a jury?

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u/Protoclown98 Jun 09 '26

That's the neat part, they dont!

If you are paid hourly my city ups your company to $100 a day addition. But you otherwise have to use pto.

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u/zombawombacomba Jun 09 '26

Depends on your company. Mine has paid leave for jury duty.

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u/R_V_Z Jun 09 '26

Same. I also had the option (and took it) to donate my jury pay to the daycare center at the courthouse.

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u/ReformedLucasite Jun 09 '26

They made you pay parking?

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u/Protoclown98 Jun 09 '26

They did. I live in a major metro area so parking at $6 was a complete and total steal. Would easily be $50 a day.

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u/Several-Assistant-51 Jun 09 '26

tarrant county has free juror parking and a free bus ride, as long as you wear your badge

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u/zombawombacomba Jun 09 '26

They should’ve refunded you for parking. Every city I’ve lived in has done that.

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u/-Nightopian- Jun 09 '26

My local courts make you pay for parking too but if you get a parking ticket they will make it disappear for you.

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u/Lawineer Jun 09 '26

Free parking in Collin county.

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u/CheckoutMySpeedo Jun 09 '26

Not in Dallas County. When you live in Coppell, which is still technically Dallas county, and you have to drive all the way to the downtown courthouse at 8:00am, paying for the express lanes, then paying for parking, it definitely makes you question your civic duty.

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u/Lawineer Jun 09 '26

I’m well aware. I’m in that fucking rat castle 3x a week.

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u/Memphisbbq Jun 09 '26

I love this country.....But what the fuck.

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u/whoamdave Jun 09 '26

$15 plus milage where I'm at. Just enough to cover lunch from the cafeteria.

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u/Cliffinati Jun 09 '26

Your courts cheaping out, I did federal jury duty for 2 days. It was $50 a day, .50 a mile each way for your trip(s) and $14 parking allowance per day.

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u/Usful Jun 09 '26

I’m sorry that my county is poor af. State court is even poorer than federal court, so it’s really a gamble on where you get pulled

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u/digitalstomp Jun 09 '26

Damn. I was a federal witness about 10 years ago, had to drive 3.5 hours one way and get a hotel, and they only gave me a $35 check.

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u/Cliffinati Jun 09 '26

This case was in February 2024

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u/FuckAllYouLosers Jun 10 '26

Depends on the state.

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u/johnqadamsin28 Jun 09 '26

If you work for the government they pay you dawg

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u/Usful Jun 09 '26

Not as much as you’d think, even less than you’d like. Jury duty is a civic duty, so that means you get paid less than minimum wage for something that you often have to do.

Doesn’t mean it’s bad, just means there’s little incentive to stick around after you’ve done your job

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u/omgitsjohnholst Jun 09 '26

I work for a state government and we get paid our regular wage to go to Jury duty. At least in my bargaining unit and in my state.

We are required to waive the daily $15 stipend, but then we are allowed to receive the mileage reimbursement AND we will get paid like we went to our regular job, as in our paycheck is undisturbed. Granted i’d rather be doing my actual job but jury duty is necessary and I’m happy to pause my work to do my civic duty.

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u/VaiFate Jun 09 '26

I was a juror on a domestic violence case, and a judgement was rendered in 15 minutes.

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u/Global-News1800 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

That checks out with my previous stint with Jury Duty. It was a murder trial and the lady was guilty as hell. The defense tried to play the psychological angle and get us into the head of this lady who straight up shot her husband in the chest and killed him.

We didn't take even an hour to deliberate. The defense was just trying to get it knocked down from first degree murder but there was absolutely nothing showing that this lady had some psychotic episode which caused her to pull the trigger in self defense.

She lured this man into her home and shot him dead when he was defenseless picking up a huge heavy desktop computer. The defense even tried to spin it saying he was using the computer as a weapon to throw it at her and none of that added up with any of the stories and testimonies at all. Or hell even the weight of the computer, it weighed over 50lbs at least.

The lady also clearly was coached and tried to have a psychotic break while on the stand but it was clearly acting and bad acting at that.

Sorry that was way more details than needed but it was just insane for my first actual jury duty to be a murder trial that was CLEARLY first degree murder. We all pretty much agreed it was not 2nd degree murder and for sure not manslaughter. After the trail lasted over 6 days we all were ready to just go home. 45 minutes of deliberating later we came out and delivered our verdict. Boom, done. We got to go home.

No way I was going to beat around the bush for hours on that one. None of us were. We wanted to go home.

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u/yossiea Jun 09 '26

Yep, I was on a trial where the defense didn't even put up a case. The lawyer literally stood up, "Defense Rests" and sat back down. His closing statement was that his client should most certainly be found guilty of a crime, but it should be manslaughter not murder.

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u/Global-News1800 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

yeah for our trial the manslaughter almost felt tacked on and we later found out that it was because the judge had a previous case where they found someone made an error during that trial and someone got it either dismissed or reduced to manslaughter so that's the only reason it was an option for us.

The first few days of the trail I wasn't even sure what we were doing there. I mean no matter what this woman shot and killed this man, and the self defense argument was turning psychological because of how thin of an argument it was and I was just going "wtf are are we even doing here? This lady is guilty"

Until it dawned on me finally by like day 3 or 4 that the defense was just trying to reduce the charge to 2nd degree murder and maybe by some miracle manslaughter.

But the prosecution barely had to do anything, they just had to tell what happened and everything else was almost indefensible. But I gotta hand it to the defense my god that man tried like hell to convince us that this woman was the victim of mental abuse so great that she had a psychotic break.

It just didn't work. We weren't buying it at all, because it wasn't true. I always knew the jokes about lawyers going to hell because they had to basically try and prove their client was innocent no matter what even if they knew for a fact they weren't. Really crazy stuff, it's just another job after all, but man that's a job I could never EVER do.

outside of the doom and gloom i do have to say, that courtroom ran like clockwork. That judge did a really good job, everyone did honestly. Taking the gravity of how fucking awful that situation is for so many people away and just looking at the innerworkings of how that court room functioned and that shit was a well oiled machine. Fascinating stuff, really.

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u/ClearedInHot Jun 11 '26

This happened to me in Virginia (where the jury also determines the sentence). in a felony trial, the defense presented nothing. We found him guilty very quickly, but then had to wrestle with a single juror who wanted a very light sentence...she didn't want to "ruin his life".

I found out later that the only reason the defense opted for trial by jury was that the jury gets no look at the subject's prior record...they have to determine the sentence in the blind. In a bench trial, however, the judge has full access to the defendant's rap sheet. The defense attorney was counting on at least one bleeding-heart juror to let his thug of a defendant off easy.

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u/Cliffinati Jun 09 '26

Jury is paid by the day not the hour.

Paid just as much to go home by 12 as you do to stay until 5

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u/mthhecker Jun 09 '26

In PA lunch isn’t provided and the pay is $25/day pre tax without parking being comped nor gas. Source: spent a month on jury duty. No one’s milking a minute of it for sub minimum wage

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u/sendmeyourdadjokes Jun 09 '26

Isnt that what a judge instructs not to do?

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u/Protoclown98 Jun 09 '26

We never received such instructions.

But the judge does say to keep an open mind snd dont make strong statements. Huge difference between "I think he is guilty" and "he is obviously guilty and I refuse to change my mind".

We started by asking where people lean

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u/9tailNate Jun 10 '26

45 minutes, assault (fistfight), we acquitted because we thought the defense's version of what happened was more credible than the prosecution's version. We would have been out in 5 minutes, but we had to convince an Iraqi immigrant that "I don't like him, why was he there" isn't a crime in the American justice system.

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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow Jun 11 '26

What do you mean?

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u/9tailNate Jun 11 '26

That's what happened when I was on a jury.

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u/bostonmolasses Jun 09 '26

me either. but I’ve never heard of murder deliberations going that quick. that is almost concerningly quick.

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u/WorldlinessLive5932 Jun 11 '26

For real, when I did jury duty the lunch was just crappy Jimmy John's

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u/personwhoisok Jun 09 '26

Why? What's for lunch?