Rep. Crockett questions deadliness of Karmelo Anthony’s murder weapon, condemns 35-year sentence
OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
2:57 PM – Wednesday, June 10, 2026
U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett suggested during a recent podcast episode that 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony’s murder weapon was too small to kill anyone after he was convicted of first-degree murder.
During a two-hour livestream of her podcast, “Clock it with Crockett,” the congresswoman responded to the conviction and sentencing of Anthony in the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf.
After the racially charged trial, Crockett (D-Texas) also argued that Metcalf’s White family, despite grieving his death, does not understand the plight of Black women — appearing to make the whole conversation about her.
“Black women, especially black women who have Black male children live in fear and agony every single day … fear and agony that I promise you the Metcalfs probably never spent a day living that way, and we’re going to have to have just some real conversations about race in this country,” Crockett said during her stream.
She then went on to claim that Anthony’s knife did not constitute a “deadly weapon,” arguing that his choice of weapon determined his motive.
“So it was small,” she said. “Well, I would have argued the size of it alone, you wouldn’t even think it’s a deadly weapon.”
“Those are the ways that you look at intent, right? Like if you got a machete, bro, it’s a wrap,” she added later.
Crockett’s panel of speakers further emphasized that Anthony “only stabbed” Metcalf “once,” and that the court should have examined “if it’s one stab versus a gazillion.”
The congresswoman then pointed to the size difference between the two males, seemingly suggesting that, in Anthony’s position, she may have stabbed Metcalf as well.
“Me as a five-foot-three woman, if a 300-pound man is beating me like on top of me and beating me down, I’m not limited to fist,” she explained. “’Cause I’m telling you right now, if you were twice my weight and got way more strength than me and you got me pinned down, I’m … I don’t believe I’m going to survive.”
“And when you look at even like George Floyd, like George Floyd died and they never took out a quote unquote ‘weapon,’ right?” she continued.
Crockett, a former criminal defense and civil rights attorney, defended Anthony to TMZ as well, doubling down on her questions about the murder weapon and Anthony’s 35-year sentence on Wednesday.
“I don’t know what this tool was that they talk about, knife or some refer to it as a tool. He ended up hitting Austin one time and it was about where he hit him,” she told TMZ, adding, “this wasn’t someone who said, ‘Hey, let me stab you with this seven times.”
“When you’re looking at the punishment range, there’s a reason in Texas that it goes from five to 99 or life, because you are looking at how intentional, like how bad was this? 35 years for a kid who had decided to go under a tent that was not his team’s tent as it was raining, and simply didn’t want to be put out in the rain by some random kid that he didn’t know, who was larger than him … Listen, a lot of people don’t know what it is to live as a Black person in this country … The fact that there’s little to no mercy seen or humanity seen, when this Black boy said that ‘I was scared,’” she continued.
When asked if a White defendant would have received the same 35-year sentence under identical circumstances, Crockett replied that she could “guarantee” they would not. She went further, suggesting a White teenager would likely have avoided a murder conviction altogether.
Crockett’s time in the U.S. House of Representatives will come to an end at the close of her current term.
She ran for the U.S. Senate in the recent election, and after losing the Democrat primary, she did not run for re-election to her U.S. House seat. She will serve until January 3, 2027.
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