A North Texas man who claimed he wasn’t the shooter in a fatal robbery that killed two people nearly 18 years ago and who said prosecutors misused rap lyrics he wrote to secure his death sentence was executed Thursday evening.
James Broadnax was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) north of Houston.
He was condemned for the 2008 shooting deaths of two men outside a suburban Dallas music studio. Prosecutors say Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, fatally shot and robbed Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in the parking lot of Butler’s recording studio in Garland. Cummings was sentenced to life without parole.
Broadnax was defiant in a final statement in which he also sought forgiveness from relatives of the victims in the crime.
The execution also was punctuated by screams of “I love you” from his wife, who also was among witnesses to the punishment.
Prosecutors said Broadnax, 37, confessed to the shooting, telling reporters during jailhouse interviews that “I pulled the trigger” and that he had no remorse.