James Broadnax has spent nearly half his life on Texas death row for the 2008 killings of Stephen Swan, 26, and Matthew Butler, 28, outside their Garland music studio. A Dallas County jury sentenced him to death in 2009 after prosecutors tried him as the shooter in the robbery. Now, he is scheduled to be executed April 30, even as a new confession arises and his case keeps moving through the courts and the state clemency process.
On March 19, Broadnax’s lawyers filed a new petition in Texas criminal court built around a declaration from his cousin and co-defendant, Demarius Cummings. In that declaration, signed March 11, Cummings said he, not Broadnax, shot both men. That confession was initially reported by The Dallas Morning News.
In that filing, Broadnax’s lawyers argued that jurors sentenced him to die on the theory that he was the actual shooter. They also argued that, if the case were retried today, Broadnax could not be convicted in the same fashion because he was not tried as a party to the crime.
Jim Marcus, a clinical professor at the University of Texas School of Law who has been consulting with Broadnax’s legal team, said that question goes to the heart of the case. “There are several issues that haven’t been adequately reviewed by the courts, by any court at this point,” Marcus told the Chronicle. “And so one of them is that it turns out that Mr. Broadnax was not the shooter.”
Marcus said Dallas County sought death against Broadnax because prosecutors believed he was the shooter, while not seeking death against Cummings. “Now we’re in a situation [where] we’re about to execute the non-shooter and spare the shooter,” he said.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Broadnax’s March petition.
His lawyers also filed a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. In that filing, they asked the board to recommend that Broadnax’s death sentence be reduced to a lesser punishment or, if not, that the governor grant a 180-day reprieve.
It states that Broadnax “should never have been sentenced to death, as he did not shoot Swan and Butler.” It also points to his conduct in prison, describing him as a peer counselor, mentor, and participant in faith-based programming.
Burke Butler, co-executive director of Texas Defender Service, said the case now reflects several of the issues that keep surfacing in Texas death penalty litigation.
“What’s deeply concerning about this case is we have a person who clearly was wrongfully convicted of the death penalty, someone else has admitted to committing the underlying crime, and nonetheless, he still appears to be headed towards execution,” Butler told the Chronicle.
Broadnax also has two petitions pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. One challenges jury selection, arguing that prosecutors tracked prospective jurors by race and struck Black jurors in violation of Batson v. Kentucky. Marcus said the broader setting matters here, stating that “Dallas County is a county that has a long history of racial discrimination when selecting juries, including in capital cases.”
The second federal petition challenges two other parts of the case: prosecutors’ use of Broadnax’s handwritten rap lyrics at sentencing, and the state’s use of one forensic analyst to present the work of another.
That rap-lyrics issue has drawn backing from the music world. On March 9, popular Houston musician Travis Scott filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Broadnax’s appeal. The brief argues rap is protected artistic expression and warns against treating the genre itself as evidence of criminal tendency. Reporting from The New York Times said a broader coalition brief also drew support from entertainers including Young Thug, T.I., Killer Mike, Anthony Anderson, and Kevin Liles.
“The system in Texas is incredibly broken when you have an actually innocent person headed towards an execution date, when the real killer has admitted to being the actual perpetrator,” Butler said. “It shows that our entire system of justice is profoundly flawed.”
This article appears in April 24 • 2026.
