Execution Report: James Broadnax

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.

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