Shoot your mouth off first, ask questions later.

That's the modus operandi of Sunny Hostin, co-host of ABC's The View, who heedlessly attacked the US legal system last week over the sentencing of convicted killer Karmelo Anthony.

Anthony, a black 19-year-old, was condemned to 35 years in prison on June 9 for the murder of Austin Metcalf, a white 17-year-old, at a Texas high school track meet in April 2025.

According to Hostin, Anthony is the real victim.

'There seems to be two systems of justice in play in this country and there have been for a very long time,' declared Hostin, who argued Anthony was simply acting in self-defense when he stabbed Metcalf in the chest with a three-inch blade during an argument.

'I don't understand why self-defense was rejected by this jury,' Hostin said on June 22.

That analysis does not sit well with Dr Phil McGraw, renowned talk show host and expert jury consultant. 'They're using this case and Karmelo Anthony to advance an agenda,' Dr Phil tells the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview, referencing Hostin and other pundits. 'They're not interested in Karmelo Anthony.'

'There's no evidence that this confrontation was started by anyone other than Karmelo Anthony. There's no evidence that it was escalated by anyone other than Karmelo Anthony. [These commentators] apparently didn't bother to learn the facts of the case before they started crying foul,' he says.

A high-powered legal team, including the president of the Texas NAACP and lawyers with the firm of prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, have now taken on Anthony's defense free-of-charge and are seeking to overturn his conviction.

The racial composition of the jury is expected to feature prominently in the appeal. Of the 12-person panel, three individuals were reportedly racial minorities and the rest were white. Additionally, three black potential jurors were reportedly struck from the Collin County, Texas jury pool by the prosecution in the jury selection process – raising a challenge by the defense.

District Court Judge John Roach Jr considered the defense's legal objection – known as a Batson challenge – that the jurors were struck because of their race and rejected it, concluding that the prosecution had race neutral reasons to keep them off the jury. But Hostin alleged that because there were no black jurors, Anthony did not face a 'jury of his peers,' as guaranteed by the 6th Amendment to the Constitution.

Dr Phil says that there are legitimate grounds to appeal the conviction over the jury's composition, even while he suspects Anthony's conviction will be upheld.

'If you don't have a [racially] representative jury, then the argument will be that there wasn't fair protection under the law,' says Dr Phil, who co-founded Courtroom Sciences, Inc. (CSI), a consulting firm to advise lawyers trying cases before jurors.

However, he notes, 'this [trial] happened in North Dallas. There's not a large representation of black population there. Collin County is approximately 50 percent non-Hispanic white, 20 percent Asian and the jury's ethnicity reflected that community.'

Additionally, it will be on Anthony's legal team to prove that the judge erred by allowing the black potential jurors to be removed, or 'struck,' from the jury and that the outcome of the trial would likely have been impacted by their inclusion.

For instance, Dr Phil observes, it was the observers and not Anthony or Metcalf who injected race into the dialogue around this case.

'[Anthony and Metcalf] didn't have a history of having conflict based on any racial history and, at the time of the incident, nobody reported that there were any racial slurs made or anything of the sort, so that didn't play a part in what took place,' says Dr Phil, recounting evidence presented at trial.

'The narrative of a black teenager and a white teenager in a white Texas county was just a template superimposed onto a pre-existing racial grievance framework and that spread faster than the facts,' he argues. 

'The question [for the appellate panel] has to be, based on the facts, should it have made a difference if black people were on the jury?' explains Dr Phil. 'The appellate panel is going to look at this and say: since race didn't seem to be a factor in the incident, why should the race of the jury make a difference in the outcome? And if they rule a certain way just because they're black jurors is that justice?'

As for Hostin's claim of 'two systems of justice' in America, Dr Phil rejects that assertion outright.

'The system worked and it's still working,' he argues. 'They had the trial and he was convicted. They said: we don't like the jury composition. Well, then you can appeal. And if [the appeals panel] thinks the judge erred in not seating a representative jury, then they can send it back and make it happen again, which means the system is still working.

'If they disagree with that, they can take it to the Texas Supreme Court and get another bite at the apple. The system is a good one and it works. We don't need to be trying this on Instagram. We don't need to be trying this on television.'

In conclusion, Dr Phil defends the US jury system and the individuals who sit on those panels against Hostin's allegations of bias.

'My experience with juries over the years is that they tend to get it right,' he says. 'This is one of our greatest rights in the United States, is that we can go and demand a jury trial and have people in our community take all the facts into consideration and you've got to have a unanimous verdict.'

'It's a very high standard to deprive somebody of their liberty, and it should be a very high standard,' he says.