Aug. 24, 2026

Karmelo Anthony Denied a New Trial, the Clancy Defense Rests on 'a Puppet With Someone Pulling the Strings,' the Last Photo of Tupac

Show Notes
Transcript

A Texas judge denied Karmelo Anthony's motion for a new trial Saturday, leaving intact his murder conviction and 35-year sentence for the April 2025 stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a Frisco track meet. Retired Kaufman County Judge Michael Chitty ruled in a one-page order without explanation, two days after a hearing at which Anthony's former trial attorneys testified that a dispute over an unwritten "gentleman's agreement" with prosecutors kept him off the witness stand. Chitty was assigned to the case after visiting Judge Sid Harle recused trial judge John Roach Jr. over a post-verdict television interview. Collin County DA Greg Willis said his office expected the ruling; defense attorney Russell Wilson said the case will continue on direct appeal to the Fifth Court of Appeals. Also: the defense rested Friday in Lindsay Clancy's murder trial after forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified she was "frankly psychotic" and described her as "a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings." Prosecutors called rebuttal witness Dr. Avram Mack, who found a major depressive episode and no psychosis. Closing arguments are expected this week. And in Las Vegas, jurors in the Duane Davis trial heard from the man who took the last known photograph of Tupac Shakur alive.

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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is daily Crime Injustice

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from Calaroga Shark Media powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher.

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It's Monday, August twenty fourth, twenty twenty six. Three cases today.

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Two of them are still running, one of them ended

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over the weekend. And if you were not watching your

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phone on a Saturday afternoon, you missed it. In Plymouth, Massachusetts,

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the defense rested Friday morning in the Lindsey Clancy trial

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after four weeks of testimony. It is now down to

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a handful of rebuttal experts and then closing arguments, which

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the judge has said could land as early as today.

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In McKinney, Texas, a retired judge named Michael Chitty spent

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Thursday and Friday listening to two days of testimony about

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why Carmelo Anthony deserved a new trial for killing Austin Metcalf.

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He had a hard deadline of today to decide. He

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did not use it. On Saturday, he denied the motion

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in a one page order that explained nothing, and the

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conviction and the thirty five year sentence stand. And in

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Las Vegas, the first full week of testimony rapped Friday.

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In the trial of Dwayne Davis for the nineteen ninety

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six murder of Tupac Shakur, where the jury spent five

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days listening to a man talk his way into a

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murder charge on tape. Let's get into it. On the

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evening of January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, in a

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house on Summer Street in Duxbury, Massachusetts, Lindsey Clancy strangled

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her three children with exercise bands in the basement while

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her husband was out picking up takeout and a prescription.

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Cora was five, Dawson was three, Callen was eight months old.

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Clancy then cut herself and went out a second story window.

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Survived and has been paralyzed ever since. She has pleaded

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not guilty to three counts of first degree murder. She

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does not deny killing them. Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has

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never disputed the act. What he disputes is whether the

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commonwealth can prove she was criminally responsible, and in Massachusetts,

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that burden sits on the prosecution. On Friday morning, at

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about eleven fifty, Reddington rested Lindsey Clancy, never took the stand,

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and he saved his heaviest witness for last. The final

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defense witness was doctor Philip Resnik, a forensic psychiatrist who

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testified by video. If you follow these cases, you know

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the name Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, Casey, Anthony, and most

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relevant here, both criminal trials of Andrea Yates. That parallel

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is not subtle and the defense did not intend it

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to be. Andrea Yates drowned her five children in Texas

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in June of two thousand and one. Her first jury

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convicted her. That conviction was thrown out on appeal, and

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at her second trial in two thousand and six, a

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jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Resnick

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testified for the defense both times and told those juries

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Yates had severe postpartum psychosis, so when he appeared on

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a screen in Plymouth on Friday, everybody in that room

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understood what was being invoked. Resnik told the jury. He

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interviewed Clancy in May of twenty twenty three, about four

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months after the killings, for roughly three hours. He also

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interviewed her parents and went through her medical records. He

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described a woman who was paralyzed, who presented as flat

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and matter of fact, and who nurses reported was crying

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every day. About her three dead children. Then he took

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on the strongest piece of the prosecution's case. Here is

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what the Commonwealth has hammered for four weeks. In the

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hours before those children died, Lindsey Clancy was functioning. She

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was texting, she was on the internet, She called restaurants,

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she used Apple Maps. Her Apple Watch logged her walking

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the house and taking stairs. The theory is that a

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woman who can order takeout and time an errand is

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a woman who knows exactly what she is doing. Theresnick's

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answer was that psychosis is not a switch that stays flipped.

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He said he was not suggesting she was frankly psychotic

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every minute of that day, that she was functioning at

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a level that was not frankly psychotic, right up until

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the moment she had what he called a command hallucination

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while her husband was out running two errands. And then

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he gave the jury the image that the entire defense

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case has been building toward for a month. He said

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Clancy was in a dream state, that she did not

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have control over her own body, that it was almost

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as if she were a puppet and someone else was

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pulling the strings. That is the defense in one sentence.

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That is the whole thing. And then came the cross,

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which was one of the better ones I have seen

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in this trial. Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague did not try to

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argue psychiatry with a man who has been doing this

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for fifty years. She went and found something Resnick himself

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had published in which he wrote that command auditory hallucinations

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are easy to fabricate. People experiencing genuine ones do not

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always obey the voice, especially when obeying would be dangerous.

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Resnick's own writing used against Resnick's own conclusion. That is

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smart lawyering. Then she went straight at the Yates comparison.

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The defense had just spent an hour building. She pointed

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out that Andrea Yates committed herself to a hospital five

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separate times and attempted suicide twice, all while trying not

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to hurt her children. Do you see the move the

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defense wanted this jury thinking about Andrea Yates? Sprague said, fine,

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let's think about a woman with a five times hospitalized, screaming,

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red flag psychiatric history who fought her own illness for

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years before it beat her. Then let's look at the

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record in this courtroom. Because this is the thing I

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keep coming back to Lindsey. Clancy told a lot of people,

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a lot of things in the weeks before her children died,

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her husband, her mother, her providers, her journal, anxiety, insomnia,

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brain fog, depression, suicide, thinking, intrusive thoughts about harming the children,

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all of it real, all of it documented, all of

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it something somebody should have caught. But she never told

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a single treating provider she was hearing a voice commanding

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her to do it. That detail surfaces afterward, and not

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in a clinical note from December. It surfaces to a chaplain,

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to her husband, and to a psychologist the defense hired.

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That is the crack this jury has to decide what

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to do with. It. Does not mean she is lying.

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Psychosis is a nightmare to reconstruct after the fact. But

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it is the gap, and the prosecution has stood in

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it for four weeks. The defense rested, and prosecutors did

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not wait five minutes. They immediately called their first rebuttal witness,

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a psychiatrist named doctor Avram Mack, who interviewed Clancy twice

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in April of this year. He described a woman who

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spent most of her day in bed, not much interested

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in her physical therapy or in the food, and then

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Max said the thing the commonwealth needs. He disagreed with

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Resnik what he diagnosed was a major depressive episode, not psychosis.

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He also disagreed with the doctors at the facility where

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Clancy lives now who have diagnosed her with bipolar disorder,

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and said he saw no evidence of sustain mania. Clancy

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had told him she felt her body was damaged by

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the medication she was on. Max's answer was careful. He

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said he could appreciate that she felt side effects and

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a degree of change from those drugs. He just did

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not know that that belief was necessarily psychotic. That is

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the fight. Two psychiatrists, both credentialed, both looking at the

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same woman, one saying puppet, the other saying depressed, and

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twelve people from Plymouth County get to sort it out.

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Prosecutors have said they intend to call three rebuttal witnesses total.

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Two more are expected today. And then there is the

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fight happening with the jury out of the room, which

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almost nobody is covering, and which may matter more than

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any of the expert testimony. Thursday, Judge William Sullivan held

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a charge conference that is where lawyers argue over what

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verdict options actually go on the slip of paper the

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jury takes into deliberations. First degree murder is on it,

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second degree murder is on it, and Reddington is pushing

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hard to get involuntary manslaughter on it too. His theory,

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there is not insanity, it is involuntary intoxication. The argument

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is that Clancy was over prescribed, that her medications were

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changed and stopped abruptly, and that the drugs altered her

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mental state in a way she did not choose and

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could not control. Prosecutors are fighting it. Sullivan has not ruled. Look,

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I'm gonna be honest with you about why that matters.

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Right now, this jury has a binary in front of

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it that jurors find unbearable. Either you send a woman

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to prison for the rest of her life with no parole,

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or you find her not criminally responsible and she goes

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to a state psychiatric hospital. Nothing in the middle. Give

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that jury a manslaughter option, and you have handed them

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a place to land when they cannot all agree deny it,

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and you force them to choose. Both sides know exactly

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what they are doing there, and neither one is thinking

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about mercy. They are thinking about arithmetic. One more thing

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from last week. It is not evidence, but it is real.

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Thursday morning, hundreds of women showed up outside the Plymouth

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County Courthouse in pink, carrying homemade signs, and they did

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not chant anything. The organizer, a woman named Renee Kimball,

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has no connection to Clancy or her family. She said

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it was not a protest and it was not a rally.

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That when you are living in a mental health crisis,

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it is already loud and chaotic, and a rally was

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not what Clancy needed. So they stood in silence for

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over an hour, then formed a circle, said the Lord's

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Prayer and raised their hands in the shape of hearts.

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Reddington stopped on his way in and people shouted that

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they loved him. He said his client is beat up

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and sad and that this would help her. And I

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want to be careful here because there is a version

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of this story that gets told badly. There are three

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dead children in this case. Cora, Dawson and Callen did

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not get a rally. There is no crowd in pink

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standing on a street for them, and there never will

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be because they are five and three and eight months

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old forever. So no, I am not going to tell

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you a crowd outside a courthouse is a beautiful thing.

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It is a complicated thing. Some of those women drove

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to Plymouth because they recognize something in Lindsey Clancy's medical

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records that they recognized in themselves, and it scared them.

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That is a public health signal, but it is not evidence.

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The jury cannot hear about it, and it does not

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get a vote. Cora Clancy was five years old and

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in kindergarten. Dawson Clancy was three. Callen Clancy was eight

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months old and had been alive less than a year.

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They were strangled in the basement of their own house

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by the person whose entire job was to keep that

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from happening to them. Whatever this jury decides about why

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that stays true, someone has to say their names when

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we come back. A Texas judge answered the biggest question

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in the Carmelo anthony case on Saturday afternoon in a

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single page without explaining himself, and a two day hearing

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exposed everything both sides had agreed to hide from that jury.

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On April second of twenty twenty five, at a high

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school track meet at Kaikendall Stadium in Frisco, Texas, seventeen

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year old Carmelo Anthony stabbed seventeen year old Austin Metcalf

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in the chest under a team tent in the bleachers.

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Austin died. When police took Carmelo into custody, an officer

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referred to him as the alleged suspect, and Carmelo corrected

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him and said he was not alleged that he did it.

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He also asked whether Austin was going to be okay

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and whether what happened could count as self defense. In June,

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a Collin County jury took three hours to reject self

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defense and convict him of murder, then sent an him

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to thirty five years. He is nineteen now in state

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custody at a Texas prison unit near Novasota, and on

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Saturday afternoon, a retired judge named Michael Chitty signed a

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one page order denying his motion for a new trial.

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The conviction stands, the thirty five years stand. The operative

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language is almost the entire document. Chitty wrote that upon

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reviewing the motion, the record, the evidence, the briefs, and

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the relevant case law, the court has determined the motion

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should be denied. That is it two days of testimony

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a recused judge, a courtroom full of families, and the

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answer comes back on half a page with no reasoning attached,

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and before anybody gets worked up. That is normal. Trial

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judges deny these motions in that exact language. Every day,

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nobody owes you an essay. But normal and satisfying are

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two different things. And if you are the Metcalf family

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or the Anthony family, you spend a week watching your

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child's life get taken apart in open court and got

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a paragraph back. Anthony's appellate team, led by an attorney

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named Russell Wilson, filed the motion. Under Texas law, a

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court has seventy five days from sentencing to rule, which

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put the deadline at today. Chitty beat it by two days,

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and that was not a courtesy. If he had let

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it run out, the motion would have died anyway by

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operation of law without anybody signing anything. Silence would have

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been a no he chose to sign. How did a

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retired judge from another county end up holding it? If

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you were with us Friday, you know. Judge John Roach Junior,

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who ran the murder trial, went on a Dallas television

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station after the verdict and said the jury got it right.

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Anthony had already filed notice of appeal On Wednesday, a

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visiting judge recused him, holding that the test is not

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whether roach could actually rule fairly, but how it looks

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to a reasonable member of the public. That is not

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a mistake. That is a choice. No rule requires a

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sitting judge to go on television and create his own jury.

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He chose to, and the cost was that the biggest

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ruling in the case landed on a judge who had

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never seen it. Chitty took the bench Thursday morning, and

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what came out over the next two days is the

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reason this segment exists. Because that jury never heard most

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of what either side actually had before trial. The two

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sides entered into what everybody in that courthouse has been

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calling a gentleman's agreement unwritten off the record, keep the

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case focused on what happened under that tenth that morning

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and leave out prior conduct and character evidence about the

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defendant and the victim. Both each side had material it

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did not want a jury to hear, so they traded.

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At this hearing. That trade got unpacked in open court

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for the first time. Leed prosecutor Bill Wirsky described what

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the state had been sitting on text messages on Anthony's

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phone that he characterized as a doc documented pattern of

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preoccupation with guns, knives, and fighting, And he told the

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court that less than two hours before the stabbing, Anthony's

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girlfriend went to an assistant principal at their school and

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said she was scared of him and that he would

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not take no for an answer. Then Anthony's own lawyers

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put on the other half. They told the court Austin

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Metcalf had a history of getting into fights and had

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been involved in spraying racist graffiti, which Worski himself described

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in blunter language than I am going to use here.

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The defense said that incident drew twelve months of probation.

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I want to slow down here because this is where

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a lot of coverage is going to go badly this week.

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None of that was presented to a jury, None of

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it was cross examined, none of it was tested. It

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came out at a post conviction hearing, where the question

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was not what kind of people these two teenagers were,

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but whether an unwritten handshake between lawyers cost a defendant

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his constitutional rights. And nothing on that list changes the

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fact that governs this case, Austin Metcalf was seventeen, he

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was unarmed, and he is dead. Nothing a kid's spray

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paints on a wall makes him fair game for a

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knife years later. That is not a close call, and

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I'm not going to pretend it is now. The legal

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argument because there was a real one in here. Wilson's

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core claim was that the structure of that trial was improper.

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He told Chitty that Roach ran what he called a

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shadow docket, governed by off the record agreements between lawyers

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instead of rulings on the record. He argued there was

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a waller violation, the constitutional problem you get when a

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courtroom is improperly closed or hearings happen without the defendant present.

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Roach barred cameras and capped public seating at twenty seven.

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Wilson also argued the jury instructions improperly narrowed what jurors

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could consider about self defense, and the biggest one the

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defense said Anthony was effectively coerced out of testifying in

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his own defense. Mike Howard, who represented an Anthony a trial,

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spent hours on the stand Thursday walking through how the

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two sides built that agreement. Toby Shook another trial attorney

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followed Friday. Their testimony was that the defense understood the

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deal to cover Anthony testifying about what happened under the tent,

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and that the biggest dispute of the entire trial came

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at the moment he was about to take the stand,

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when prosecutors took the position the agreement did not protect

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him if he did. Wilson told the court the argument

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that followed was heated enough that his client lost trust

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in the state, and Shook said out loud what every

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defense lawyer in America was already thinking. If Anthony had testified,

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the jury might have come back on manslaughter. Werski was

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the state's only witness, and his version was flatly different.

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He said there was never an agreement preventing Anthony from

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taking the stand, and that the state assumed the limits

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would get negotiated if the moment came. He also defended

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the whole architecture of that trial, the closed hearings, the

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tight court room, the handshake itself as now necessary because

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of threats, public pressure, and misinformation around the case. His

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position was that the restrictions protected the trial. The defense's

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position was that they broke it. Shook conceded to his

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credit that both sides could have walked away from that

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handshake with genuinely different understandings of it. And that is

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the whole problem with a gentleman's agreement. There is no

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transcript of a handshake. When it goes wrong, you get

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exactly this. Two experienced lawyers, neither of whom I have

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reason to think, is lying remembering the same conversation two

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different ways in front of a third judge two months

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after a nineteen year old got thirty five years. There's

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a playbook for this, and the playbook is put it

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on the record. It takes ninety seconds. Nobody did. The

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hearing ran past six Friday evening. Each side got twenty

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minutes to close. Then everybody went home, and Chitty spent

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his weekend reading a record he did not build. Reaction

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came fast. District Attorney Greg Willis said his office respected

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the decision and had expected it, that the jury's verdict stands,

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and that his thoughts remain with the Metcalf family. After

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a painful week, Russell Wilson said the defense respectfully disagrees

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that the issues raised deserve real appellate review and that

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the denial does not end the case. So here is

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where this sits. The conviction and sentence are intact. He

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is in a Texas prison, and he stays there. The

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case moves to direct appeal in Dallas, where it will

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sit for a year or more. And that is the

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thing to understand about Saturday. The defense lost the ruling,

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They did not lose the record. Everything Howard, Shook and

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Wirsky said under oath last week is preserved on a transcript,

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and appellate judges read transcripts for a living. The bar

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on appeal is high, and most convictions survive it. But

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anyone telling you this case ended Saturday is not reading carefully.

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Austin Metcalf was seventeen years old. He played football. He

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had a twin brother named Hunter, who was at that

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track meet. He has been dead for almost seventeen months,

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and his family spent last week watching lawyers argue about

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a handshake while his name and his brother's name got

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dragged through a hearing. Neither of them chose whatever the

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Fifth Court of Appeals does with this, and whatever anybody

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says about anybody's text messages, Austin Metcalf is the one

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who does not get to come back. Someone has to

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say his name when we come back. The first week

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of testimony in the Tupac Shakur murder trial ends with

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a man who took a photograph at a red light

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and did not know what he had. On the night

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of September seventh, nineteen ninety six, Tupac Shakur was shot

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at an intersection just off the Las Vegas Strip, riding

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in a BMW driven by Marion Knight, the head of

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death Row records, a white Cadillac pulled alongside and someone

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in the back seat opened fire. Night was injured. Shakur

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died six days later at twenty five. For twenty seven years,

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nobody was charged. In September of twenty twenty three, a

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Clark County grand jury indicted Dwayne Davis, known as Keffi

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D on one count of murder with a deadly weapon.

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He is sixty three. He is pleaded not guilty, and

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he is the only person ever charged and the only

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person who was in that Cadillac who is still alive.

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Jury selection began August tenth. Opening statements were August seventeenth.

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Friday closed the first full week of testimony, and the

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jury has now heard from sixteen witnesses. And here is

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the strange shape of this trial. The state's best witness

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against Dwayne Davis is Dwayne Davis not on the stand

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on tape, over and over across almost twenty years. Thursday

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the jury. He spent hours on a recorded interview Davis

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gave in two thousand and eight to Los Angeles police

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detectives working the unsolved murder of Christopher Wallace, the rapper

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known as Biggie Small's in it. Davis walks them through

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the shooting. He describes handing his gun into the back seat.

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He says his nephew, Orlando Anderson, is the one who

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rolled down the window and fired. He says if the

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other car had been on his side, he would have

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done it himself. The reason he was talking at all

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is the reason his lawyer is fighting this case. The

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detectives told him it was confidential. One of them, Greg Cating,

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told him on tape that nothing he said that day

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could be used against him. Someone in the room said,

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nothing leaves this room, and then a detective adds the

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caveat that has become the entire prosecution theory. If you

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don't say nothing, it's cool. But if you go out

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there and start talking. He went out there and started talking.

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In twenty nineteen, he published a memoir called Compton Street Ledge,

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laying out his version of that night in detail. He

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has since tried to walk it back, saying he did

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not write all of it and that parts were invented

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to sell copies. Prosecutors say the book blew up whatever

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protection the proffer gave him. That is the fight, not

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whether he said it. Whether saying it in a bookstore

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cancels the deal he made in an interview room. Then

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