From Newsgroup: alt.obituaries

James Garfield Broadnax, 37, was executed by lethal injection on 30
April 2026 in Huntsville, Texas for the robbery and murder of two men.

On Thursday, 19 June 2008, Broadnax, then 19, and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, also 19, robbed and killed Stephen Swan, 26 and Matthew
Butler, 28 outside their recording studio in Garland. Shortly after
1:00 a.m., a man riding his bicycle home from work saw their bodies
and alerted firefighters at a nearby fire station.

Swan was shot in the head at intermediate range and in the chest.
Butler was shot in the arm, the chest, and the back. Both victims were
shot with a .380 caliber handgun.

Broadnax and Cummings went to Cummings's apartment in southeast Dallas
later that day. While there, Broadnax boasted of "hit[ting] a lick" -
street slang for committing a robbery - and displayed Swan's driver's
license. The two men left the apartment in Swan's Ford Crown Victoria,
after telling those present that they planned to sell the vehicle.

Fifteen minutes after Broadnax and Cummings left, Broadnax's aunt, who
had been present in the apartment, saw news reports of the double
homicide. Believing that Broadnax and Cummings were likely involved,
she telephoned the Garland Police.

Broadnax was pulled over by police that evening in Texarkana while
driving Swan's vehicle, because the license plates returned
information for a Cadillac, rather than a Ford. Officers found that he
had outstanding warrants and arrested him.

Four days after his return to Dallas, Broadnax gave multiple
interviews to television reporters. In them, he said that he had
Cummings had traveled to Garland that day with the specific intent of committing a robbery. He said that while Cummings participated in the robberies, he alone murdered the victims. He provided explicit details
of the crimes. Broadnax told reporters that he had no remorse for his
actions and hoped that a jury would sentence him to death.

At Broadnax's trial, the defense claimed that he was under the
influence of marijuana and PCP at the time of the murders and that he
was still intoxicated at the time of his arrest as well as during his confessatory television interviews four days later. The prosecution
presented testimonies of his arresting officer in Texarkana, the jail
house nurse, and the reporters who interviewed him to rebut this
claim. All testified that he appeared to be lucid, rational, and not
under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

A jury convicted Broadnax of the capital murder of Stephen Swan in
January 2009 and sentenced him to death. All of his subsequent appeals
in state and federal court were denied.

After Broadnax's sentence was pronounced, relatives of the victims
were permitted to speak to him. Teresa Butler, Matthew Butler's
mother, said "You stole our son. I couldn't say it better than you
said it yourself; it would have been better if you'd never been born.
Broadnax laughed at Mrs. Butler while she was speaking to him.

Butler's widow, Jamie Butler Cole, referred to a letter she said
Broadnax wrote her, in which he apparently expressed regret or asked
for forgiveness, and said that she forgave him for her sake, not his.
"It gives me freedom to live my life," Cole said.

Stephen Swan's sister, Deborah Swan, told a reporter for the Dallas
Morning News that she did not receive a letter from Broadnax and that
she could not forgive him.

Broadnax's lawyer, Brad Lollar, told the reporter, "James has
repeatedly expressed to me that he was remorseful for the pain he's
caused." Lollar added that Broadnax asked him to warn everyone to stay
away from PCP.

Demarius Dwight Cummings was convicted of capital murder and sentenced
to life in prison without parole. He remains in custody as of this
writing.

In March 2026, after Broadnax's execution date was announced, Cummings
gave a sworn statement in which he confessed to killing Swan and
Butler. Cummings stated that both he and Broadnax were high on
marijuana and PCP at the time. He pulled the trigger on the murder
weapon, but convinced his cousin to confess to the murders because
Cummings had a lengthy criminal record, and Broadnax did not.

"I have always maintained that James was the one who shot Mr. Swan and
Mr. Butler, but the fact that James received a death sentence for
these crimes, while I was the one who shot the victims, has been
weighing on my conscience, particularly as I have become more
spiritual during my years in prison."

Texas officials said that they had no plans to pause Broadnax's
execution in light of Cummings's confession. Under Texas law, a
defendant can be found guilty as a party to capital murder regardless
of whether he personally killed the victim.

Broadnax's final appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court presented a claim
that the submission of rap lyrics written by Broadnax at his
punishment hearing, and the state's characterization of them as
"gangster rap," constituted an unconstitutional racial bias. The
litigants also re-raised an allegation that already been raised
throughout every earlier stage of his appeals, which was that racial
bias was used in the selection of his jury to exclude black jurors.
Broadnax's lawyers also argued that the finding of guilt via the
so-called "law of parties" must explicitly be made at the defendant's
trial, not applied afterward.

Robert Patterson, the lone black member of Broadnax's jury, was also
the foreman. He told a news reporter, "race was not an issue with
respect to the decision we made."

On social media, Theresa Butler, Matthew Butler's mother, wrote, "This
so called confession from cummings is just a stall tactic by
Broadnax's desperate defense team. Its all a lie."

A Texas judge refused to stop Broadnax's execution, noting that in his seventeen years on Death Row, Broadnax never recanted his televised
confession.

News reports by so-called "mainstream" outlets such as the Associated
Press covering Broadnax's execution scrubbed all references to his
televised confessions from their reporting once Cummings claimed to be
the shooter. "Prosecutors said Broadnax, 37, confessed to the
shooting," read the AP's story. Even one of the TV stations that
broadcast Broadnax's confession to its audience in 2008 failed to
mention it in a story that made multiple references to Cummings's
confession.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt Broadnax's Thursday execution on the jury bias and rap lyrics claims. On Thursday
afternoon, the court issued another decision not to halt the execution
because of Cummings's confession.

Seven of the victims' relatives watched Broadnax's execution from a
viewing room adjacent to the death chamber. Tiana Krasniqi, a British
woman who Broadnax married on April 14, watched from another room.
Reporters wrote that she leaned against the window with her arms
spread and screamed "I love you."

"I prayed to God for your forgiveness," Broadnax said in a defiant
last statement. "Despite what you think about me, I hope to God that
prayer was answered. But no matter what you think about me, Texas got
it wrong. I'm innocent. The facts of my case should speak for itself.
Period."

The lethal injection was then started. Broadnax said "Don't give up"
as the chemical entered his body. His next attempt to speak ended with
a gasp. He was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m.

David Carson
Sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, court documents,
Associated Press, Dallas Morning News, KERA News.
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Texas Execution Information
www.txexecutions.org
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