Andrew Anthony’s television comments and a Democratic congresswoman’s public remarks sparked a dispute over jury composition after Karmelo Anthony was convicted of murder in Frisco, Texas, drawing national attention and sharp debate about race and facts surrounding the trial.

Karmelo Anthony was found guilty this week and received a 35-year sentence for the 2025 killing of Austin Metcalf in Frisco, Texas. The case became a flashpoint, with race injected into public conversation because Metcalf was white and Anthony is Black. Emotions ran high and public figures jumped in, amplifying claims about the jury that don’t match the record.

Andrew Anthony, the defendant’s father, told a national news audience he noticed an all-white jury at the trial, a striking assertion given how quickly it circulated online and in the media. “What stuck out to me, number one, was the all-white jury, but I was trying to be, you know, like, all right, it’s not that big of a deal. I mean, the truth is on our side,” he said. That line made headlines and hardened the narrative for many viewers.

But the claim that the jury was entirely white is demonstrably false and needed correcting. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) repeated the same allegation in public, increasing the reach of the error. Those two high-profile statements helped drive a misleading story about the courtroom makeup instead of sticking to the facts revealed during the trial.

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“I’m not necessarily convinced — not that I could tell you the name of one person on this jury — that we had 12 impartial White folk out of Collin County sitting on a jury for this young black man,” she said, exhibiting her empathy for the convicted murderer.

Her claim about the jury is patently false.

Sources close to the trial confirmed to Fox News Digital that the jury was not made up only of white people, despite Crockett’s claim, which has been parroted by activists online.

Of the 12 jurors, three were racial minorities, including Asian and Indian, eight were women and four were men. They confirmed that of the 18 total jurors, including alternates, six were minorities.

The jury in the trial, which spanned nine days in a Collin County, Texas, courtroom this month, found that Anthony intentionally stabbed Metcalf, then 18, to death on April 2, 2025.

The murder took place after Anthony entered the Memorial High School track team’s tent at a meet in Frisco, and refused 15 times to leave when asked. Witnesses testified that Metcalf lightly shoved Anthony in an attempt to remove him from the tent, after which the teen reached into his bag, pulled out a knife, and stabbed Metcalf in the chest.

The factual record straightens what rhetoric scrambled. Court records and reporting show the jury included racial minorities among the 12 seated jurors and among alternates, contradicting the all-white claim that circulated widely. Getting that detail right matters because false narratives can inflame divisions and shift focus away from the trial’s central evidence.

Court testimony painted a clear sequence: an unwanted intrusion into a team tent, repeated refusals to leave, a physical push, and then the fatal stabbing. Witnesses described the moments before the knife came out, and jurors heard that sequence over the nine-day proceeding. The jury concluded the act was intentional, which produced the conviction and the lengthy sentence.

The sentence handed down still allows for the possibility of release in the future; Anthony could be eligible for release in about 17 years. That statutory calculation is part of the punishment structure, separate from the immediate public uproar over who sat on the jury. Legal consequences and public commentary run on different tracks, and the facts should guide each conversation.

This episode shows how easily a misleading claim from a sympathizer or a public official can become a national talking point. Conservatives arguing for rule of law and respect for institutions should press for accuracy, not spin, when cases touch on race. The public deserves straight reporting and honest commentary, especially when lives and reputations are on the line.