An administrative judge on Wednesday will decide whether the man who presided over Karmelo Anthony’s murder trial can oversee the next steps of the Frisco teen’s case.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. inside the Collin County courthouse in McKinney. Judge Sid Harle, an administrative judge out of San Antonio, will preside.
District Judge John Roach Jr. was at the helm in June when Anthony, 19, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the murder of Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet in Frisco.
Weeks after the conviction, a new team of appellate lawyers filed two motions: one for a new trial and the other to recuse Roach, arguing he compromised his impartiality by making several public statements about the trial after sentencing. The hearing to argue for a new trial is expected to begin Thursday morning, but a judge can’t be assigned to those proceedings until Harle rules on the recusal.
Roach first publicly commented on Anthony’s case on June 11 — two days after the trial’s conclusion — in an interview with WFAA-TV (Channel 8). Roach told the outlet he believed Anthony received a fair trial and called the teen “a nice young man who committed a crime.”
The appeal listed three other occasions appellate attorneys argue raise concerns about Roach’s impartiality: a written statement he made to Fox News; a gag order he instated barring those involved in the trial from speaking about it publicly; and a June 17 letter he addressed to “members of the Collin County family.”
In the letter, Roach, who is retiring at the end of the year, wrote that presiding over the trial was “one of the great honors of [his] judicial career” and that he believed it was handled fairly.
Roach declined to comment on the recusal hearing and his various public statements since the trial when reached via email by The Dallas Morning News.
David Finn, a Dallas defense attorney and former criminal trial judge who is not involved in Anthony’s case, said he doesn’t believe Roach’s comments warrant recusal, calling them “acceptable” and “understandable,” but not “advisable,” given the intense scrutiny around the case.
Unlike Anthony’s trial in June, the hearings will be streamed into an overflow room. Anthony’s legal team argued Roach’s restriction of a livestream into the overflow room compromised the teen’s right to a fair and public trial.
This is a developing story and will be updated.