Featured Image Credit: James Broadnax's legal team
Topics: Texas, Crime, Travis Scott
Thomas Bamford
In what became one of the most contested executions in recent Texas history, 37-year-old James Broadnax was put to death by lethal injection this week at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
He was pronounced dead at 6:47pm on Thursday (30 April), hours after the US Supreme Court refused to intervene, and just minutes after delivering a final statement that was defiant till the end.
He became the third person to be executed in Texas this year.
Broadnax had been on death row for the 2008 robbery and shooting of two men outside a recording studio in Garland, a suburb of Dallas.
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Matthew Butler, 28, who owned the studio and his friend Stephen Swan, 26, were shot and killed in a car park.
Broadnax asked for his victims' families for forgiveness with his final words before being put to death, while simultaneously insisting that the wrong man was dying.
"I prayed to God for your forgiveness," he said in his final statement, The Texas Tribune reports.
"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."
His wife was also reported to have been repeatedly screaming 'I love you' as he was executed.
Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, were both convicted in connection with the murders, but while Broadnax received the death penalty, Cummings was sentenced to life without parole.
The case had seemed straightforward at the time. CNN reported that Broadnax had confessed to pulling the trigger in a series of jailhouse TV interviews, telling reporters that he 'no remorse'.
But years later, he recanted - claiming he had been under the influence of drugs during those interviews and hadn't cared about his own life at the time.
Earlier in the year, Cummings, still serving his life sentence, recorded a video confession claiming that he had been the one who fired the shots, not Broadnax.
According to Cummings, he had persuaded his younger cousin, then just 19 years old and with no prior criminal record, to take the blame.
Broadnax's legal team seized on the confession, pointing out that it was backed up by a significant piece of physical evidence: only Cumming's DNA had been found on the murder weapon and in the pocket of one of the victims.
Broadnax's DNA was found on neither.
A-list names from the music world took notice: Travis Scott, T.I and Killer Mike all filed briefs at the Supreme Court in support of Broadnax's appeal - in part because of a separate argument that prosecutors had weaponised rap lyrics Broadnax had written to paint him as a violent and dangerous in front of the jury.
But appeal after appeal was rejected.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals threw out the case in April, and the Supreme Court knocked back multiple appeals on Monday. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also refused to grant even a 180-day reprieve.
On Thursday afternoon, the nation's highest court denied the final request to halt the execution.
The Texas Attorney General's office called Cummings' confession 'questionable new evidence,' and insisted that the jurors who were stuck during the original trial had been removed for legitimate reasons unrelated to race - a claim Broadnax's team fiercely disputed, alleging prosecutors had used a spreadsheet that specifically bolded the names of every black potential juror.
Matthew Butler's mother, Theresa, had publicly asked for the execution to go ahead.
"This so called confession from Cummings is just a stall tactic by Broadnax's desperate defence team, It's all a lie," CNN reported that she had posted to social media.