Lessons from the Austin Metcalf Murder

Reminder: I'm not your attorney and this is not legal advice. 

I mentioned this incident the other day, but the Daily Mail has some additional information on what happened, reporting:

    A 17-year-old admitted to fatally stabbing another teen boy at a track and field meet in Texas as he was arrested, according to police.

    'I'm not alleged. I did it,' Karmelo Anthony reportedly told cops as he was taken into custody after he stabbed 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at the Kuykendall Stadium in Frisco.

    Anthony stabbed Metcalf in the heart, killing him, after Metcalf told him he was sitting in the wrong chair at the match between their two schools, according to the late teen's family.

    An arrest report says a confrontation between the two star football players began when Metcalf told Anthony he was sitting under another team's pop-up tent and told him to move, as reported by NBC DFW.

    The two students from different high schools began fighting before Anthony unzipped his bag and reached in, telling Metcalf: 'Touch me and see what happens.'

    The report says Metcalf then 'grabbed Anthony to tell him to move and Anthony pulled out ... a black knife and stabbed Austin once in the chest.'

    Anthony reportedly ran away before being arrested by responding officers.

    He had apparently told a school resource officer: 'I was protecting myself,' and, 'He put his hands on me.'

This was a "monkey dance" that went lethal because the suspect was more violent than the victim. Metcalf thought they were still at a lower level of conflict and Anthony zipped past "Go" and went directly to using lethal force (and now to jail). Marc MacYoung uses the analogy that "violence is a road, not a destination," progressing from low levels of conflict (e.g., verbal insults, threats) and advancing to greater and greater violence the farher you go down the road. 

    A problem that can arise, however, is that the landmarks along the road that tell the participants where the violence has progressed or where it is going may look different or not even be recognized by certain participants; or one of the participants may move faster down the road than the other ("Someone can go from Mile Marker 25 to 150 in heartbeat," MacYoung writes). And, "[i]n other cases, you're dealing with someone where 300-plus is the norm," such as "someone who routinely deals with higher levels of physical violence."(1) The latter seems to have been the case with Anthony; and, frankly, based on the facts, he seems to have set up Metcalf, hoping that Metcalf or someone like him, would confront him about where he sat and give him the excuse (from Anthony's perspective) to react violently. BLM, don't you know.

    But let's assume that for sake of argument that Anthony legitimately thought he was defending himself. Where his self-defense claim would fall apart was on the reasonableness of the force used against his attacker, because it was not proportionate to the threat. These were two young men approximately the same age, so there was not a disparity of force that you might see between a man and a woman, or a young man and an elderly or infirm man. Moreover, Anthony was not being faced with lethal force: Metcalf, rightly or wrongly, was only attempting to evict Anthony from what was essentially a reserved seating area. Even if Metcalf "put his hands" on Anthony, that does not equate to lethal force or a risk of grave bodily harm; and for Anthony to escalate the force to a lethal level takes him outside of what was reasonable. 

    From the opposite perspective--that of the victim in this case--there is the issue of how far to push an issue. As MacYoung explains, the road of violence has landmarks that tell how far down the road you have traveled; landmarks that generally follow a progression before reaching levels of lethal force. But there are also generally exits along the road, although these will become fewer and farther apart the longer you go down the road. This is where deescalation tactics come into play. But this means that either one participant will need to exit in a way that allows the other participant to save face; or a third party or parties will need to break up the situation in a way that the participants have a face saving excuse to back down; or that one participant will bring in allies that will make the situation untenable for the other participant where he is forced to withdraw. (Or course, the humiliated participant may, in turn, return later when the situation is more propitious for him).

    In this particular case, Anthony's statement to Metcalf warning that something would happen if Metcalf touched him was a landmark. It was a sign to Metcalf that he needed to exit the road or turn back (or, if the violence was necessary, to get down to it). Again, the problem here is that Metcalf probably thought that it was a landmark indicating that the events were going to go from a verbal exchange (Mile Marker 25 or 50) to a fist fight (Mile Marker 100)-probably something that Metcalf felt confident he could handle. Meanwhile, Anthony was ready to jump far down the road to using lethal force (Mile Marker 500). 

    Although there was undoubtedly other warnings of where Anthony was along the road, based on the facts we know, the most significant was Anthony reaching into his bag. Metcalf probably could not see what was in the bag, but anytime a confrontation leads to an opponent reaching for something out of sight, you can be sure that they are not reaching for something good for you (but is it a weapon or a cell phone?). I suspect that Metcalf either didn't recognize the significance of that act, or was so caught up in the monkey dance that he did not see the act. 

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(1) I'm going to go out on a limb and just say that someone from an "honor" culture--i.e., more sensitive to insults and slights--are more likely to fall into the category of being comfortable at operating at higher levels of violence. Black ghetto culture is definitely an honor culture, which is why you so often hear them talk about respect or complaining they have been disrespected.