James Broadnax, 37, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on April 30. Now, his cousin says he’s the one who pulled the trigger.
By Jamie Landers
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
A month out from James Broadnax’s execution date, another man has admitted to pulling the trigger during the deadly 2008 robbery that sent Broadnax to death row, according to court documents — and a written confession — obtained Wednesday by The Dallas Morning News.
Broadnax, 37, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection April 30 in Huntsville. He was condemned by a Dallas County jury in 2009 for the deaths of Stephen Swan, 26, and Matthew Butler, 28, outside their Garland music studio.
Broadnax, formerly of Texarkana, was 19 at the time of the murders. According to previous reporting from The News, Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, had set out to rob Swan and Butler, but left with only $2 in cash and a 1995 Ford.
Cummings and Broadnax were both convicted of capital murder in separate trials. Broadnax, who was tried as the triggerman, was sentenced to death, while Cummings was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“This new evidence fundamentally undermines the State’s case for Mr. Broadnax’s conviction and death sentence,” Broadnax’s attorneys wrote in a petition sent Wednesday to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. “Neither Mr. Broadnax’s conviction for capital murder nor his death sentence would have occurred had the jury known that Mr. Cummings, and not Mr. Broadnax, shot the two victims.”
In a statement, Claire Crouch, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office, told The News the office will “do its due diligence and respond to the motion.”
‘I want to clear my conscience’
In a written declaration signed March 11, Cummings said it was his idea to rob Swan and Butler on June 19, 2008, and that he obtained the pistol that was used during the shooting.
“Following the crime, James and I spoke about the story we would tell,” Cummings, 37, wrote. “I persuaded James to take the blame for shooting the two victims.”
Cummings explained part of his reasoning was that he had already been convicted of other crimes, including burglaries, while Broadnax had no criminal record other than a charge pertaining to marijuana possession.
Cummings said he has maintained that narrative for more than 15 years, until a meeting late last month with Broadnax’s lawyer, Steven Herzog, in which Cummings was informed that his cousin’s execution date had been set.
“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,” Cummings wrote.
Cummings said the fact only his DNA was found on the murder weapon — not Broadnax’s — is proof he’s telling the truth.
According to court documents, Broadnax’s DNA was never found on the gun nor the victims, while Cummings’ DNA was found on both.
“I want to clear my conscience and do not want James to be executed for shooting two people when I was the one who committed those acts,” he said. “It was my decision to come clean.”
Previous confessions
Shortly after the killings, Broadnax and Cummings gave multiple interviews to reporters from jail.
“I murdered them both,” Broadnax said then. “No hesitation or nothing.”
But the stories they told didn’t match, according to the petition.
Broadnax’s attorneys cited one key discrepancy: Broadnax said he asked Swan and Butler for a cigarette in order to use their reaction time to pull the gun and shoot them. However, in all of Cummings’ interviews, he said he was the one who posed the question.
Court documents say that detail was used at trial to prove the “premeditated and cold-blooded nature of the killing.”
Broadnax was also described in the petition as being “ambivalent” about the death penalty, which the filing says contributed to his willingness to take the fall. Broadnax’s attorneys said he endured severe psychological and physical abuse as a child, and as an adult, showed clear signs of depression. He often expressed he couldn’t bear to live any longer.
“They might as well give me the death penalty,” Broadnax said in an interview. “What am I living for?”
And in another: “I don’t want life. Pick one [vein]. If they don’t, I will.”
Law of parties
Broadnax’s attorneys emphasized in the petition that Broadnax wasn’t charged, indicted or convicted under Texas’ law of parties, and trial transcripts show prosecutors declined to use it when asked in court.
The law states a co-defendant involved in a crime that results in a murder can be held equally responsible, even if they weren’t involved in the actual killing.
Because Broadnax was tried as the shooter, the jury was never instructed to consider a requirement for pursuing the death penalty against an accomplice: Finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant “intended to kill the deceased or another, or anticipated that a human life would be taken.”
“Absent the false media confessions given by Mr. Broadnax, the jury would be left with no basis on which to infer that Mr. Broadnax ever had the intent or anticipation that human life would be taken when he joined the robbery that Mr. Cummings initiated,” the petition reads.
When choosing between execution and life behind bars, jurors in capital murder cases must also decide whether there is a probability the defendant will be a continuing threat to society.
According to Broadnax’s attorneys, the state’s case during the punishment phase was that Broadnax met the threshold for the death penalty solely based on the “execution style” of the killings.
“You may just look at the crime and have enough before you to say that yes, he is a future danger,” a prosecutor told the jury during closing arguments.
Broadnax, a Black man, has long argued his trial infringed on his constitutional rights, namely the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Before the state’s highest criminal court, Broadnax has claimed prosecutors used race as a basis to strike prospective jurors, leaving him with a nearly all-white jury.
He has also contested the use of more than 40 pages of rap lyrics as evidence of future dangerousness.
Jamie Landers is a breaking news reporter at The Dallas Morning News. She is a graduate of The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, where she studied journalism and political science. Jamie previously reported for The Arizona Republic and Arizona PBS.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
