Congresswoman Minimizes Murder Knife

A sitting U.S. congresswoman just called a convicted murderer’s knife “not a deadly weapon” — and suggested she would have done the same thing he did.

Story Snapshot

Rep. Jasmine Crockett defended Karmelo Anthony hours after he was sentenced to 35 years for stabbing Austin Metcalf to death.
Crockett claimed the knife used in the killing was too small to count as a deadly weapon — a claim critics called false and reckless.
She argued race and the lack of Black jurors drove the guilty verdict, calling the trial unfair.
The jury heard a full self-defense argument and rejected it — a fact Crockett’s defense largely ignored.

Crockett Defends Convicted Killer on Camera

Just hours after Karmelo Anthony, 19, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for stabbing 18-year-old Austin Metcalf to death at a Texas high school track meet in 2025, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) hosted a live panel to defend him. She said, “It’s no way this child should be charged for murder and go to prison for 35 years.” She also suggested she personally would not have limited herself to using her fists in the same situation — implying she, too, might have used a knife. ^[3]

Crockett then questioned whether the knife Anthony used was truly a deadly weapon, pointing to its size as a reason the murder charge was too harsh. ^[4] Legal experts and critics pushed back hard. A knife — regardless of blade length — has been treated as a deadly weapon under Texas law in countless cases. The jury was given a self-defense instruction. They heard the argument and still said guilty. That is not a system that ignored Anthony’s defense. That is a system that weighed it and rejected it. ^[1]

False Claims About the Jury

Crockett also claimed the jury had no Black members and said that played a “huge role” in the outcome. ^[2] She asked on camera, “Would the outcome be the same if he was white and his victim was Black?” ^[2] But Fox News reported that Crockett spread false claims about the jury’s makeup. ^[1] More than 500 people were screened as potential jurors. The selection process followed standard legal rules. Crockett offered no evidence that race-based strikes were used illegally to remove Black jurors. ^[15]

Fox News anchor Lawrence Jones said he personally had doubts about the case before the trial — but the evidence changed his mind. ^[14] Even voices who started skeptical of the verdict came around after reviewing the facts. Crockett, by contrast, doubled down after the sentencing with claims that critics say do not hold up to scrutiny. ^[1]

Why This Matters Beyond One Case

Crockett is a former public defender who built her political brand around criminal justice issues. ^[19] That background makes her comments harder to excuse as simple ignorance. She knows how trials work. She knows what self-defense instructions mean. Choosing to go on camera and call a murder conviction unjust — while suggesting the knife was not dangerous — is not a legal argument. It is a political performance aimed at stoking racial grievance. ^[3]

Jasmine Crockett is a massive hypocrite.
She’s a former public defender who spent years pushing “criminal justice reform” and claiming the system is racist against Black defendants.
Now she’s defending a convicted 1st-degree murderer who stabbed a 17-year-old in the heart… https://t.co/ZRwHhHGUf5

— 𝓢𝓪𝓼𝓼𝔂𝓛𝓪𝓼𝓼™ (@Redd986) June 10, 2026

Austin Metcalf’s family lost their son. A jury of his peers heard every piece of evidence, including the self-defense claim, and decided Karmelo Anthony was guilty of murder. That verdict deserves respect. When a member of Congress goes on live video to trash the jury, mock the weapon used to kill a teenager, and imply the whole system was racist — without proof — it does real damage. It tells people the justice system cannot be trusted. It pours fuel on anger that can turn dangerous. And it dishonors a family already deep in grief. ^[16]