MCKINNEY, Texas – Karmelo Anthony committed murder when he fatally stabbed 17-year-old Austin Metcalf last year during a confrontation at a high school track meet, a jury decided Tuesday.

Anthony kept his head down as the verdict was read, his eyes appearing to squint. Defense Attorney Mike Howard had one arm around his shoulders, pulling him close.

The guilty verdict came after nearly three hours of deliberation. The Collin County case has attracted national attention from the start and fueled months of racist vitriol on social media. Anthony is Black. Metcalf was white.

Anthony, a 17-year-old senior at Frisco Centennial High School at the time of the incident, faces five years to life in prison.

The sentencing phase of the trial began Tuesday afternoon. In Texas, a defendant can choose to have a jury or judge determine the punishment. Anthony opted to have the jury sentence him.

For sentencing, the defense called only one witness: Kayla Hayes, Anthony’s mother.

Hayes held back tears as she told jurors that although Anthony is her oldest child, he would always be her baby. Howard, Anthony’s lead defense attorney, asked whether her son regretted what he had done.

“Yes,” she answered. “I know my son, and he’s very sorry for what he did.”

Howard then asked whether there was anything she wanted the jury to consider.

“Please have mercy on my son,” she said.

Anthony sobbed softly as his mother spoke.

Assistant District Attorney Bill Wirskye asked Hayes whether she understood she would still be able to be part of her son’s life after he went to prison.

“Yes, I do,” she responded.

The state didn’t call anyone to testify during the punishment phase.

During his last chance to address jurors, Wirskye didn’t ask them for a specific sentence, but urged them to impose a lengthy term that “dignifies” the tremendous loss felt by Metcalf’s family and friends.

“You are the conscience of this community,” the prosecutor said.

Howard asked the panel to consider “sudden passion,” a legal finding that could reduce Anthony’s punishment from the standard range for murder to that of a second-degree felony. If the jury believes the teen acted in the heat of the moment, then the sentencing range they must consider would be two to 20 years, rather than the five years to life that applies in first-degree cases.

Howard emphasized Anthony’s age and the chaotic environment captured on surveillance footage, suggesting he may have felt terror before stabbing Metcalf.

“I am not asking you to do what I want, what they want, or what anybody wants,” Howard told jurors. “You have to follow your heart.”

Wirskye described the defense’s sudden passion argument as “completely inapplicable to this case and this set of facts.”

“They got it wrong,” he said of the strategy.

The jury left to deliberate a sentence at about 5:15 p.m.

Closing arguments

Wirskye, the lead prosecutor in the case, disputed the defense’s self-defense claims in his closing arguments Tuesday morning. He asked the panel to focus, in part, on Anthony’s apparent mindset when he came to a high school track meet with a knife in his bag.

Anthony’s decision to bring the weapon, his refusal to leave an opposing team’s tent after being told multiple times to get out, surveillance footage captured during the incident and the witness testimony were enough for a murder conviction, Wirskye said.

The prosecutor also argued Anthony provoked Metcalf into pushing him.

“You don’t get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoked the shove,” Wirskye told the panel.

The prosecutor also dismissed the defense’s theory that Metcalf impaled himself on Anthony’s knife as “ludicrous,” but urged jurors to return a verdict of manslaughter if they believed it had merit.

In his arguments to the jury, Howard challenged the state’s portrayal of the case on multiple levels. He asserted that Metcalf did not have the legal authority to “put his hands on” Anthony.

“A hit, a shove, a push,” Howard told jurors, “Melo had an absolute right to defend himself from that.”

Howard revisited the Collin County medical examiner’s testimony in closing. He used a highlighter to demonstrate the possible angle of the knife wound on Metcalf, describing it as “awkward.”

The defense lawyer argued that an intentional, aggressive stabbing motion would have produced a different wound, suggesting instead that it was consistent with a hasty action taken in self-defense.

Before the closing arguments began, Roach told jurors they had two possible charges to consider: murder and manslaughter.

They took less than half a day to reach a verdict.