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As local freeways were jam packed on Wednesday evening during rush hour traffic the jury for the Karmelo Anthony trial was being selected at the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney. Before rush hour was over, however, news outlets and social media had erupted with yet another attention-grabbing headline generated from the case that has brought international attention to North Texas.
The news of which jurors were selected, or more accurately, which ones were not selected, by attorneys on Wednesday caused the latest burst of attention. According to reports, none of the 12 jurors or 6 alternates are Black. Anthony is Black. Austin Metcalf, who police say Anthony stabbed to death on April 2, 2025 at a high school track meet in Frisco, is white. For a case that has seen race elevate it to national headline status, a jury without any Black peers was never going to sneak by quietly.
This case transcended local borders from the start, and it’s safe to say the scope of interest in the trial has expanded even further in recent weeks. Outlets that rarely look to McKinney for its subject matter seem to be quite interested in North Texas now.
“Karmelo Anthony Trial Hits Snag as Jurors Admit Personal Biases,” reads a Wednesday night TMZ post on X, while the New York Post blasted out “Potential Karmelo Anthony jurors dismissed after saying they could never send him to prison: ‘He looks like a child’” following a basic live update that included some of the exchanges between attorneys and potential jurors.
The basic headline or short social media caption had the effect of a lit match tossed onto a pile of gasoline soaked rags. Dominique Alexander, a local activist and leader of the Next Generation Action Network, who has worked as a spokesperson for the Anthiony family over the past year, took to Facebook to express his thoughts.
“Today, during jury selection in the Karmelo Anthony trial, we witnessed a deeply troubling development. The prosecution used its final strikes to remove the remaining qualified Black jurors from the jury pool,” the Facebook post read. “The Next Generation Action Network is outraged. A fair trial is a constitutional right, and public confidence in our justice system depends on the belief that juries are selected fairly and without discrimination. The removal of all remaining qualified Black jurors raises serious concerns that cannot and should not be ignored.”
Ultra-conservative social media personality Sarah Fields, whose handle, @SarahISCensored, is ironic given her ubiquity and more 424,000 followers on X alone, has been in town, reporting to her followers from McKinney.
“At one point, supporters of Karmelo Anthony reportedly refused to even share the same bathroom with me,” read an X post from early Thursday morning. “I was also told that one individual allegedly stated that they wanted to break my glasses in half.”
This is all before opening arguments have begun.
As is typically the case, however, there’s more to the story than the headline or the knee-jerk reactions of a few social accounts with hordes of followers. What Alexander’s Facebook post left out is that, according to those who witnessed the jury selection process, race of the potential jurors was not the deciding factor.
According to WFAA’s independent legal expert who was watching jury selection from the courthouse, the three Black jury candidates who were struck by the prosecution had something else in common other than their race – they are also educators. Over the two days of jury selection, many questions were asked of potential jurors, including which ones were parents, and indeed, which ones were educators. Given the trial involves a high school student killing another high school student on school campus during a school event, such a distinction is common.
“You have to give race neutral [reasons] why certain jurors or a group of individuals were struck. And in this case the state had a reason, they were educators,” WFAA’s legal expert said in a Wednesday night report. “Parker said questions lawyers asked potential jurors were pretty typical. They included questions about self-defense, Anthony’s age and whether his race would make it difficult for jurors to render an impartial verdict. They went over everything that you would go over in a normal murder case.”
The Dallas Morning News reported on Thursday morning that a “Justice for Austin Metcalf” rally will be held near the courthouse on Thursday afternoon. Earlier in the week, demonstrators speaking out on behalf of Karmelo Anthony held signs promoting Anthony’s self-defense claim. Anthony has been charged with first-degree murder and the trial is reportedly expected to last up to two weeks.
