His lawyer was a public pretender. His family raised all that money on GiveSendGo and used it all on a new home, cars, and shoes. Not one dime on a good lawyer.
Never been one myself, but I’ve known lots of Public Defenders who were fine lawyers. I think they might have done the best that could be done with an essentially non-existent defense. Rolled the dice on a hung jury
Karmelo was represented by Attorney Mike Howard. He is a private attorney at The Law Office of Mike Howard, PLLC which he formed about 17 years ago. I'm sure this attorney consumed a significant chunk of the donated money. As for Mr. Howard's defense, I was not at all impressed. Maybe that has more to do with having an impossible task. Seemed like a pretty slam-dunk case for the prosecutor.
I think it was their strategy to use an incompetent public defender. Now they can appeal citing ineffectual counsel and fund raise off the back of that telling the folks we needs to afford someone like Ben “the crumb” Crump for poor ole Anthony to gets justice.