How the Karmelo Anthony Defense FAILED To Present a Viable Argument, with Geragos and Aidala

This poor guy, in addition to losing his son, has had to deal with a nonstop harassment. They're treating him like his boy is the one who committed the murder of a black boy. That's how this is being treated. Like he's some racist kid who committed a murder for no reason. It's exactly the opposite. He did nothing wrong. He was trying to ask this kid to leave, and he paid for that with his life. Arthur, what do you make of what's happening to this poor family? Well, I listened to the interview, and I don't know who the rebel rouser is that you were referring to, their spokesperson down there in Texas. Dominique Alexander is his name. So Megan, it has literally become, people should know this, it's become an industry. It's become like a way to make a living, is to be a spokesperson for these cases. You can imagine how many there are in New York. I'm representing a police officer who's Hispanic, who killed someone who's Hispanic. All the witnesses and all the cops are Hispanic. And they're making this a racial thing where everyone is the same exact race. And I mean, they're screaming, and they're yelling, and I mean, they ripped me apart for defending the sergeant. And it's what they do. They just create problems. They're unethical. Now, there are no ethics, right? They're not lawyers. They're not judges. So they play by, and they're taking money. They're, in my opinion, stealing people's money. I don't think they are providing any service, any benefit. I think typically they wind up making things much worse. But because of all the social media and the clicks, I mean, you just rattled off like eight podcasts that I never heard of where all these different interviews are taking place. So hey, why not? And I love the question you asked rhetorically. Where is all that GoFundMe money? And I did see he filed a indigent client, meaning he has no money to do his appeal. $600,000 is a significant amount of money for anybody, even though the Mark Daragos is- It blew through in a year? I mean, that's a lot of money right there. So it's tragic. It's tragic. And the twin brother, and you highlighted that as well, Megan, my best friend who I lost on 9-11, as tragic, sad as his parents were, his siblings were, they still haven't recovered 25 years later. And I'm not exaggerating. And to be a twin, I mean, that has to take everything to a whole other level. So talk about the legality of it. I've never tried a self-defense case where the defendant didn't testify and talked about why he had to act the way he did in self-defense. There's a reason they didn't put him on the stand. I think we all know. They must have concluded he would have made a terrible witness. I mean, in a self-defense claim, Mark, to not put him up there? And he's the only one. He's the only one who could say what was in his heart when Austin Metcalf came over to him, why he said to Austin Metcalf, you know, try to touch me and you'll find out. Touch me and you'll see. Why did you say that? Why were you inviting him to touch you? What was in your head as the you'll see part of that exchange? Why did you bring the knife? All those things, if he had good explanations for them, I think we would have heard them. Except it's not the law. And it's an interesting one of the things that a judge instructs the jury in every single criminal case in America. Yeah, but isn't it different when it's self-defense as the defense? I know he has no obligation to testify and you can't hold it against him that he didn't. But he's raising his whole defense is it was self-defense. I was afraid I was threatened. Right. And if you really believed as the lawyer, still the one tactical decision that you don't get to make as a lawyer is whether to call your client or not. I've actually gone into chambers in murder cases and said it's over my dead body that the client is taking, pun intended, taking the stand. In a self-defense case, I've had more than a few cases where I had a result that was a voluntary manslaughter without the client taking the stand. People I think in this case didn't understand. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the defense lawyer. This did not strike me ever as a self-defense case. Yes, you invoke self-defense, but it was always going to be based on what was reported. Unfortunately, we didn't have cameras in the courtroom, but based on what was reported, this was always an excessive force against whatever the push, the shove, whatever the initiation was. If it's excessive force, then you're aiming for a reduction that you're negating malice. You're trying to get a manslaughter. You can argue both. You can argue both in your summation. You could say, look, our position is that he acted in self-defense. He had fear, and these are the reasons why. Now, you can't get into the reasons why if he doesn't testify. You don't know what's in his head if he doesn't testify. Hypothetically, if he says, well, yeah, I saw the deceased beat up two other kids just a week ago, and he broke the guy's nose, and he was bleeding all over the place. That's why I acted the way I did. Well, now you can have a really sound argument, but you can't tell the jury. And if you discount our theory of self-defense, this is also a case where the judge is giving you a lesser included. So therefore, you can say, you can determine whether he used excessive force under these situations and try to get what's called a compromise verdict. And to Arthur's point- They rejected all of that. They had manslaughter offered on a silver platter, and the jury said no. And then when offered the sudden passion mitigating factor on the sentencing phase, they rejected it again because that would have had a maximum of 20 years. And they gave him 35. The jury didn't buy it. They didn't buy it. It's like, I know, maybe the family, the lawyer bargained that people would hear that he was asked to leave the tent and would infer that this was a racial thing and get mad at Austin Metcalf or trying to kick the black kid out in the rain, then laying hands on the black kid as this hulking white boy. They didn't buy it. They knew it was bullshit. They knew you don't stab somebody in the heart for telling you to leave a tent and literally just placing a hand on you. Go ahead, Mark. The problem was, from their standpoint, as all cases in my experience, it's over in jury selection. When you don't have in jury selection, African-Americans on that jury, it's preordained what your verdict is going to be. I remember. OK, tell me why. I'll tell you why. I remember during the George Zimmerman trial. In fact, Mark O'Mara still teases me. Mark O'Mara was the lawyer for George Zimmerman. As soon as they got that jury and it was an all white jury, I went public and said the only way Zimmerman loses or O'Mara loses this case is if he falls and trips and hits his head. Because you are never, as a defense lawyer, going to change who the person is. Just take a look at our political scene today. Take a look at kind of the left versus right, Republican versus Democrat. You're not changing anybody's hearts and minds as a lawyer. What you're doing is you're picking a jury that will look at what your defense is and either buy it or not buy it. Either the story resonates or the story doesn't resonate. You can't change in a week, in a month, even in a one year trial, the way somebody views life. And so once you had that jury, for whatever reasons, and that jury was selected, you have to course correct to give them whatever arguments. And hopefully the lawyer, when he was doing that, understood. And by the way, the judge did give him a manslaughter. That wasn't necessarily required when the client doesn't take the stand. That was a victory for the defense. But at the same time, I guarantee you, if he still had any neurons firing, the lawyer had tried to question his client. And I can tell you, having raised a teenage boy, having represented countless teenage boys, there's rarely the teenage boy that you're going to want to put on the stand who's going to withstand a cross-examination. It just is, it's virtually impossible. But you can find, let me just say this, though. You can absolutely find Black jurors who would have convicted Carmelo Anthony in a heartbeat. And White jurors who would have acquitted him had the evidence been there. And I've been wanting to play this. I saw this on X last night. And I was like, you know, because I feel like so many people are generalizing about Black people because we're seeing a lot of Black people outside of this courthouse saying vile things to the Metcalf family and making this a race thing and saying, we got to protect ours. They don't speak for all Black people. This is bullshit. Most Black people are normal, just like White people. You know, they're good. They're bad. They're in between. All the things. They don't have, like, saddled with racial grievance all the time. And they can't be fair jurors. And they can't see justice when it's administered or it's not. And that brings me to this father, whose name I don't know. It's a viral video on X. He's sitting there with his, I think they're all boys. He says they're boys, but it's five Black children on his lap behind him. A couple are babies, so you can never tell gender so much with the babies. I accept him that these are the five Black children. And listen to this guy, SOT 19. What do you want us to do? I also have five boys. She doesn't know what to do after Carmelo is done with her sons, guys. I'm gonna go ahead and try something. Today, boys, when you go out into school, don't stab any of the kids. You think you guys can do that? You feel good about that, Lee? You feel good about that, Ace? Yeah. Oh, you're an intro. This is Ace. So is that a good commitment from everybody? We're not gonna stab any kids today? Probably not. Hey, try that, lady. That might work. I love that. Basic personal accountability and respect for others, Arthur. I did not think that was the type of flip you were gonna play. Did I just address? Neither did I. I did not expect that. Did I just address what Mark was talking about, a jury selection? It was amazing. Think of the black people you know. That's what they're like. The black people I know are like, he stabbed him in the heart. They're not saying he deserved it because he placed hands on him and said, leave our tent at a sporting event in which they were rivals. The people outside of that courthouse are nutcases. The people in the media backing up, like Jasmine Crockett, are nutcase activist types. Regular black people are not having this reaction. Maybe I'm wrong, some are. But I just think the average person, black, white, Hispanic, what have you, understands perfectly well what happened down there. The kid snapped. I don't know why. I don't know what was in the background. He snapped. And it was murder. Like, he obviously understood plunging a knife into another man's heart so deep and so hard that the heart had a two and a half inch wound and that he nicked the bone behind it. That kid was there to kill Austin Metcalf in that moment. Go ahead, Arthur. A couple of things. I just want to address what Mark said about a jury and jury selection. I agree with what you all said, Megan, is that there are plenty of black jurors who convict black people and white jurors who convict white people. But Mark is correct. I mean, what I say when I lecture at law schools, Megan, you're going to get a kick out of this, is a trial, it's like making gravy. It's like making sundae sauce, right? That is sundae sauce. But if you start with bad tomatoes, it doesn't matter how much meatballs and sausage and everything, you're never going to have a good sauce. So if you start with a bad jury, it doesn't matter how talented you think you are. They're just so predetermined to be against you. Think about this. In 2006, $20,000 equaled roughly 33 ounces of gold at spot price. At today's prices, those 33 ounces would be worth about $165,000. That's why many smart Americans diversify a portion of their savings into precious metals. And that's why you should consider buying gold from Birch Gold Group. 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