The state of Texas executed James Broadnax by lethal injection Thursday evening, a man who for nearly two decades maintained his innocence in the 2008 murders of two Christian music producers in Garland, even as his own cousin came forward just weeks ago to claim responsibility for the killings. Broadnax, 37, was pronounced dead at 6:47 p. m.
at the Huntsville Unit, becoming the 599th person executed in Texas since capital punishment resumed in 1982. His final words, delivered as the lethal drugs began flowing into his veins, were a direct challenge to the state that had condemned him. “Texas got it wrong.
I am innocent,” he said, his voice steady but strained. Witnesses described a harrowing scene inside the death chamber, with Broadnax’s wife, Tiana Krasniqi, pressing both hands against the viewing glass and screaming his name as he lost consciousness. Officials had to physically assist her out of the room.
The execution proceeded despite a firestorm of last-minute legal appeals, a petition signed by more than 80,000 people, and public pleas from 60 religious leaders who begged the state to pause and reconsider the evidence.
The case that led Broadnax to the death chamber began on a warm June night in 2008, when two young men with dreams of building a Christian music empire were gunned down outside their recording studio in Garland, a suburb of Dallas. Matthew Butler, 28, and Steven Swan, 26, had spent years pouring their hearts into Zion Gate Recording Studio, a space Butler built from nothing to give Christian artists a professional platform. Butler, a husband and father of two young children, had battled bipolar disorder and emerged on the other side with a thriving business.
Swan, described by his mother as a brilliant engineer and musician, was the technical backbone of the operation. On the night of June 19, 2008, both men were working late at the studio, unaware that two cousins from Dallas were riding a train toward Garland with robbery on their minds. James Broadnax, then 19, and Demarius Cummings, also 19, had been smoking PCP-laced marijuana earlier that evening.
They boarded the train with no specific target, only a vague plan to find wealthy victims in what they believed was an affluent suburb.
What happened next has been dissected in courtrooms and news broadcasts for nearly two decades. The cousins encountered Butler and Swan outside the studio around 1 a. m.
, but instead of attacking immediately, they stopped and talked. For 30 to 45 minutes, all four men stood on the sidewalk discussing music, the industry, and the craft. It appeared genuine, a moment of human connection between strangers.
Then Broadnax and Cummings walked away. But when they tried to return to Dallas, they discovered the last train had already departed. Stranded with no money and no way home, they made a fateful decision to go back.
Cummings told Broadnax they needed to use force this time. When they returned, Cummings approached one of the men and asked for a cigarette. In the moments that followed, a .
380 caliber handgun was fired multiple times. Swan was struck in the head and chest. Butler was hit in the arm, chest, and back.
Both men died on the sidewalk in front of the studio they had built together. The killers searched their pockets and found only two dollars in cash. They took the keys to Swan’s 1995 Ford Crown Victoria and fled.
The investigation moved quickly. A man riding his bicycle home from work discovered the bodies and alerted firefighters, who contacted police. Meanwhile, Broadnax and Cummings drove back to Cummings’ apartment in Southeast Dallas, where Broadnax began boasting about what had happened, pulling out Swan’s driver’s license and showing it around the room.
Less than 15 minutes later, Broadnax’s aunt turned on the news and saw reports of the double homicide. She recognized the details immediately and called Garland police. That same evening, officers in Texarkana, 170 miles away, spotted Swan’s Crown Victoria in a high-crime area.
A license plate check revealed a mismatch, and the vehicle identification number confirmed the connection to the Garland homicides. Garland detectives drove through the night and arrived in Texarkana around 2:30 a. m.
Three individuals were taken into custody: Broadnax, Cummings, and an 18-year-old named Lonnie Harris, who was released the same afternoon after police determined he had nothing to do with the murders. Broadnax was found behind the wheel of Swan’s car. The arresting officer noted in his report that Broadnax did not appear to be intoxicated, a detail that would become fiercely contested in the years to come.
Four days after his arrest, something happened that would seal Broadnax’s fate. Three local television news stations were given direct access to him while he was still in custody, with no attorney present and no legal counsel advising him. In those on-camera interviews, Broadnax described the events of June 19 in first-person terms.
He said he felt no remorse for what had happened. He said he did not want to spend the rest of his life in prison where he might cause harm to others. He told reporters he wanted a jury to sentence him to death.
When asked what he would say to the families of Butler and Swan, his response was two words: “Forgive them.” Those interviews became the foundation of the state’s case. Years later, Broadnax’s legal team would argue that he was suffering from the effects of PCP-laced marijuana at the time and that his statements could not be taken at face value.
They also presented evidence that he had suffered serious 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 as a child and was in a deeply troubled state of mind, genuinely not caring whether he lived or died. But the damage was done. The jury that heard his case in 2009 saw a cold, calculating individual, not a troubled teenager.
The trial took place in Dallas County under state district Judge Mike Snipes. The defense argued that Broadnax had been under the influence of PCP-laced marijuana both on the night of the crime and at the time of the jailhouse interviews. The prosecution dismantled that argument with a straightforward set of facts: no trace of PCP was found on Broadnax at the time of his arrest, no drugs were recovered from Swan’s car, and the arresting officer’s report stated clearly that he did not appear intoxicated.
On October 14, 2009, the jury found Broadnax guilty of capital murder for the deaths of both men. The conviction itself was not the most debated part of the trial. What happened during the sentencing phase would follow this case all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
Prosecutors introduced 40 handwritten pages of rap lyrics recovered from Broadnax’s car. They placed those pages before the jury and argued they were evidence of his violent nature, referencing gang affiliation and violence, and demonstrating that he was a future danger to society. Under Texas law, establishing future dangerousness is one of the required standards for imposing the death penalty.
The jury reviewed all 40 pages, then asked to review them a second time. Broadnax’s attorneys would later argue that prosecutors framed the lyrics as “gangster rap” in a deliberately racially charged manner, designed to appeal to bias rather than evidence. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund formally joined Broadnax’s legal team specifically to address these constitutional challenges.
There was a second issue that would haunt the case. During jury selection, prosecutors struck all seven black prospective jurors from the panel. Defense attorneys later produced evidence that prosecutors had used a spreadsheet during the selection process, one on which every black prospective juror’s name had been bolded.
One black juror was ultimately reinstated, but the legal challenge filed on this basis cited Batson v. Kentucky, a 1986 Supreme Court ruling establishing that removing jurors on the basis of race is a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Broadnax was sentenced to death.
Cummings was tried separately in 2011 and also found guilty of capital murder, but the state did not seek the death penalty against him. He had not given the on-camera interviews. He had not exhibited the same conduct after the arrest.
He was sentenced to life without parole and transferred to the Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony, Texas. The disparity in their sentences would become a central point of contention as the case progressed.
Broadnax arrived at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, in 2009. Polunsky is one of the most restrictive death row facilities in the United States, where inmates spend up to 23 hours a day alone in a single cell.
Over the following years, Broadnax chose to change. He was selected for a highly competitive faith-based rehabilitation program reserved for inmates who had demonstrated sustained discipline and a genuine commitment to personal growth. Inside that program, he taught classes on conflict resolution and spirituality.
He worked to de-escalate tensions between inmates and prison staff. He mentored younger prisoners. The people around him, both staff and fellow inmates, described him as a different person from the one who had arrived years earlier.
In January 2026, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice scheduled his execution for April 30. Sixteen days before that date, on April 14, Broadnax got married. His wife was Tiana Krasniqi, a British-based law school graduate who had become one of his most committed legal advocates.
The ceremony took place at the Polunsky Unit, with the two separated by a glass panel throughout. He referred to her as his queen.
Then, six weeks before the scheduled execution, everything shifted. On March 11, 2026, Demarius Cummings, still serving his life sentence at the Coffield Unit, signed a sworn legal declaration. In it, he stated that he was the one who shot and killed Steven Swan and Matthew Butler on the night of June 19, 2008, not James Broadnax.
Cummings also recorded a video statement. In it, he said, “I’m really going to tell it like it’s supposed to be told, that it was me, that I was the killer.” He explained that after their arrest in 2008, he had persuaded Broadnax to take the blame.
The reasoning was that Broadnax had no prior violent criminal record, and they believed he would receive a more lenient outcome. Cummings said he made the decision to come forward after learning two months earlier that his cousin’s execution date had been set. His declaration aligned with forensic evidence that had been part of the case record since the original investigation.
Only Cummings’ DNA profile was recovered from the murder weapon. Only Cummings’ DNA was found on the clothing of one of the victims. Broadnax’s DNA appeared on neither.
On March 19, Broadnax’s legal team filed the declaration in Dallas County District Court and with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. On April 7, the court rejected the appeal. In its ruling, the court stated the claim should have been raised in earlier filings.
A concurring opinion specifically noted that Broadnax himself had never personally recanted his own on-camera statements in the years since his conviction. The clock was still running. With the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals having rejected the appeal, Broadnax’s legal team moved on every remaining front simultaneously.
They formally petitioned Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot. He did not act. On Tuesday, April 28, legal team spokesperson Alan Ripp submitted a request to Texas Governor Greg Abbott for a 30-day reprieve, citing the new evidence as material that had not yet been fully examined.
Abbott did not respond. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied the request for clemency or commutation that same day. Three separate appeals were filed with the United States Supreme Court.
All three were denied on Monday, April 28. The final application, docketed as case number 25A900, was presented to Justice Samuel Alito, who referred it to the full court. It was denied as moot.
The Texas Attorney General’s office addressed Cummings’ confession directly in its court filings, describing it as “questionable new evidence.” The office called the racial bias claim surrounding jury selection “entirely meritless,” arguing the prospective jurors had been removed based on their answers during questioning, including opposition to the death penalty, and not because of race. Outside the courtroom, the case had drawn significant public attention.
Travis Scott filed his own separate amicus brief at the Supreme Court. Killer Mike, T. I.
, Young Thug, Fat Joe, and N. O. R.
E. filed a joint brief alongside legal scholars, all arguing that rap lyrics are a form of creative expression, not autobiography, and that their use in criminal sentencing proceedings represents a constitutional violation. The Supreme Court declined to take up the appeal.
Rob Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, released a statement after the execution. He said, “This jury was unconstitutionally impaneled. The Supreme Court has just decided to look the other way.”
Teresa Butler, Matthew’s mother, had a different response. She wrote publicly, “This so-called confession from Cummings is just a stall tactic. It’s all a lie.”
On the morning of April 30, prayer vigils were held across Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso, San Antonio, and Huntsville. More than 80,000 people had signed an online petition. More than 60 religious leaders had formally gone on record calling for clemency.
None of it produced a legal intervention. Broadnax was transferred to the Huntsville Unit, the state’s primary execution facility, located approximately 70 miles north of Houston. He was the third person executed in Texas in 2026.
He spent his final hours with his spiritual advisers and with Tiana. At 3 p. m.
, he was placed in complete isolation. At 6:26 p. m.
, the lethal injection began. At 6:47 p. m.
, he was pronounced dead. In his final statement, he addressed the families of Steven Swan and Matthew Butler directly. He told them he had prayed for years that his choices had not added to their pain.
He asked for their forgiveness. Then he said, “Texas got it wrong. I am innocent.”
He told Tiana his promise still stood. Tiana Krasniqi was among the witnesses. As he lost consciousness, she pressed both hands against the viewing glass and called his name.
Officials had to assist her out of the room. Seven members of the victims’ families were present, including the parents of both Steven Swan and Matthew Butler. Teresa Butler, Matthew’s mother, said the execution was justice.
This case leaves two sets of facts on the table, and they do not fully reconcile. On one side, James Broadnax voluntarily gave on-camera first-person confessions in 2008. He described the events of June 19 in specific detail.
He never personally recanted those statements across 17 years of legal proceedings. Every court that reviewed the case, state and federal, upheld the conviction. The Supreme Court specifically noted that the delay in raising new claims weakened their legal standing.
On the other side, the DNA recovered from the murder weapon did not belong to James Broadnax. The DNA found on the clothing of one of the victims did not belong to James Broadnax. Both profiles matched Demarius Cummings.
Cummings signed a sworn legal declaration in 2026 identifying himself as the person who fired the weapon. Broadnax’s legal team presented documented evidence of childhood 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 and a suicidal state of mind at the time of the crime. The jury that sentenced him to death had heard 40 pages of his writing labeled in court as gangster rap.
All seven black prospective jurors had been removed from the panel during selection. Matthew Butler and Steven Swan were two men who built something real, lost their lives on a sidewalk in Garland, and left behind families who spent 17 years waiting for the legal process to reach a conclusion. Whether that conclusion was accurate is the question this case refuses to close.
