The judge who presided over Karmelo Anthony's murder trial was removed from the case Wednesday after going on television to publicly endorse the guilty verdict — handing the defense a powerful opening to argue the entire proceeding was tainted.

Judge John Roach's removal underscores a basic problem: when judges step out of the courtroom and into the media spotlight, they cease to be impartial arbiters and become characters in the story. A new judge will now hear Anthony's retrial bid on Thursday, and a case that already split the public along racial lines has another fissure — this one carved by the bench itself.

Anthony, 19, was convicted of murder in June and sentenced to 35 years for fatally stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet in Collin County, Texas. The confrontation began when Anthony refused to leave a tent belonging to Metcalf's team. Witnesses said Anthony told Metcalf, "Touch me and see what happens," according to a police report cited by WEAU. Metcalf pushed him; Anthony pulled a knife and stabbed him in the chest. The jury rejected Anthony's self-defense claim after deliberating for less than three hours.

Two days after the verdict, Roach sat for a television interview in which he said he agreed with the jury's guilty finding and defended his decision to excuse three prospective black jurors before trial. The final jury included no black people. The Washington Examiner reported that Anthony's newly hired "dream team" of defense attorneys insisted Roach could not be fair and impartial at a retrial hearing after publicly backing the verdict. State prosecutors argued the judge did nothing wrong.

Dallas pastor Frederick Douglass Haynes III, a Texas Democratic congressional candidate, told reporters Roach "jumped the gun" by publicly agreeing with the verdict, the Washington Examiner reported. Anthony's supporters chanted outside the courthouse after learning of the judge's removal.

The defense has also argued that Roach enforced overly strict courtroom rules and gave incomplete jury instructions, according to WEAU. Anthony did not testify at trial.

The case drew intense social media attention that amplified the killing in racial terms — Anthony is Black, Metcalf was white — though lawyers on both sides told jurors race had nothing to do with it. The Washington Examiner noted that Anthony's parents have made the case about racism and publicly feuded with Metcalf's family.

Meanwhile, two other violent-crime cases underscore the stakes of a functioning justice system. In the Bronx, 18-year-old Iyahni McIntosh was arrested and charged with murder after allegedly shooting 39-year-old Klint French in the head Tuesday night, according to the Staten Island Advance. And in Syracuse, 25-year-old Jazmine Vann was arraigned Wednesday on a second-degree murder indictment — upgraded from aggravated vehicular homicide — after driving drunk at 70 mph through an intersection, jumping a curb, and crashing into a tree, killing 3-year-old Yasmeen Shaaf. Vann now faces life in prison. The child's mother, Nathalie Alejandro — Vann's girlfriend — was also charged with criminally negligent homicide after police found the children were not properly restrained, syracuse.com reported.

The Anthony case now turns on a simple question: can a judge who took to the airwaves to celebrate his own verdict be trusted to fairly weigh whether that verdict should stand? The system says no — he's off the case. But the damage to public confidence is already done.