Brenna Ehrlich
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James Broadnax Courtesy Lucy Adams and Moira Fett When Demarius Cummings heard that his cousin, James Broadnax, was scheduled to be executed on April 30, 2026, he told lawyers his conscience couldn’t take it anymore. Both men were arrested for the shooting deaths of music producers Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in June of 2008, but only Broadnax was sentenced to death — in part, due to rap lyrics he wrote Since Broadnax confessed to being the shooter, Cummings just got life in prison.
“It’s just been weighing on me,” Cumming admitted in a video shot for Broadnax’s clemency package. “James has been telling my story this whole time. I’m here to come forward and tell it how it’s supposed to be told. That it was me. That I was the killer.” Now, a team ranging from rappers to legal experts to documentary filmmakers are racing to save Broadnax from the needle, arguing that not only was he not the shooter, but that his trial was botched from the beginning due to a largely white jury and a sentencing phase that used artistic expression as an excuse to put him to death.
“I need to get it out,” Cummings said. “Because it’s destroying me. I feel like I should be in his place.”
In 2008, Broadnax was just 19 and hanging around Garland, Texas. He and Cummings didn’t have jobs or money, and Broadnax was listless. Broadnax, who had an artistic streak, spent his spare time scribbling lyrics in his notebooks about his life. One day, after smoking PCP-laced weed, the cousins decided to rob someone. They didn’t know Swan, 26, and Butler, 28 — two Christian music producers who had been recording that day, one of whom had two small children — but they spotted them in the a parking lot, and saw them as a payday. The robbery went sideways, and both men were shot dead. Broadnax and Cummings took off in the pair’s Crown Victoria and were arrested 170 miles away.
After they were brought back to Garland, Broadnax and Cummings were both interviewed in jail, still high, according to his defense team’s legal filings. Broadnax cut a wholly unsympathetic figure in his two interviews. In one, he bragged about shooting one of the men’s “bitch ass again” to make sure he was dead, telling reporters, “I got nothin’ to live for.” When asked what he would say to their families, he spat, “Fuck ’em…Straight up.” In another interview, he said he wanted the death penalty, and cursed out both the victims and their families again. Cummings, for his part, said Broadnax was the shooter.
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Almost 20 years later, though, Broadnax is a poet who mentors other artists on the inside, a model prisoner, and engaged to be married. At the time of the murders, his supporters say, he was suicidal, broken from a childhood of neglect and physical and sexual abuse. So when he and his cousin were arrested, his supporters tell Rolling Stone, he copped to the murders out of hopelessness and an urge to protect Cummings, since Broadnax’s criminal record was minimal compared to his cousin’s.
The confession earned Broadnax a guilty verdict in a 2010 trial — despite the fact that only Cummings’ DNA was found on the gun and one victim’s body — and during the sentencing phase, the prosecution showed the nearly all-white jury 40 pages of Broadnax’s rap lyrics as evidence of his violent nature. In his songs, Broadnax wrote about robbing, killing, and selling drugs — lyrics that were presented to the court, like “Hogtie ’em and body bag ‘em. Send them to the mayor. Then /I bombed the whole country. Send/the press. The paper.”
He also wrote about regret, his supporters say, which was not shared with the jury. “Yeah, I sold dope/I ain’t proud/I can’t lie,” he wrote in a song called “Redemption.” In another, untitled, he writes: “Help me pleaze/I’m blind’d my tearz/n I just can’t c/So many devils tryna recycle my soul.”
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As prosecutors called for the death penalty, they called Broadnax “a new breed” of “criminal,” a “monster,” and a “predator” like those on “Animal Planet,” “chomping at the bit to engage in violence.” His lyrics, they claimed, pointed to an inherently violent nature; given the chance, he would kill again. “He has not shown any remorse from the beginning,” said Assistant District Attorney David Alex at the time. “And he has not shown any, all the way to the end of the trial.”
For his part, Broadnax seemed apathetic in the courtroom, sometimes laughing during victim impact statements. “I’ve never seen a guy talk his way onto death row before, but we have now,” defense attorney Brad Lollar told press.
Courtesy of James Broadnax Leading up to his execution, though, Broadnax’s lawyers and supporters are attacking his case from all angles: there’s the clemency petition and video (shot by budding documentary filmmakers Lucy Adams and Moira Fett), and Supreme Court filings urging judges to examine the racial makeup of the jury that found Broadnax guilty, the use of rap lyrics in his sentencing, and Cummings’ confession, which he signed in March.
On April 7, two judges denied the appeal detailing the confession, though. The judges argued that Broadnax voluntarily confessed to the murders both to the press and law enforcement, and never changed his story in his previous appeals. “The only evidence Applicant offers to prove that his confessions were false is Cummings’s recent claim of responsibility as the triggerman,” they write.
The judges declined to comment as the litigation is still ongoing.
Sheri Lynn Johnson, assistant director of the Death Penalty Project at Cornell Law School, who is advising on the case, dismisses their argument out of hand. Broadnax could have petitioned to recant his confession, she says, but that would have been unlikely to change his fate. “There’s no way that such a petition would ever be granted, and it would be dismissed. It would be laughed at,” she tells Rolling Stone. “The notion that he could have brought this earlier really is ridiculous; his counsel attempted to talk to Mr. Cummings numerous times over the years.” Broadnax’s legal team filed a follow-up petition to the Supreme Court on April 20 saying as much.
On Friday, April 24, the Supreme Court will consider the filings related to jury selection and Broadnax’s lyrics; lawyers aren’t yet sure when the follow-up petition will be considered. The petition regarding lyrics includes a brief from rapper Travis Scott in support of Broadnax, as well as another brief authored by a cadre of lawyers, scholars, and rappers, including Young Thug, T.I., Fat Joe, and Killer Mike. The musicians were enlisted by Kevin Liles, hip-hop mogul and chairman of non-profit Free Our Art, which seeks to protect first amendment rights. “This is an opportunity, once again, for us to stand up for our right to freedom of speech,” Liles says. He also came out in support of Young Thug, whose lyrics were used against him during his 2023 RICO trial. “We’re talking about hip hop. We talk about systemic racism around what we do.”
Killer Mike — who admits to writing some hair-raising lyrics in his youth — says he got involved due to his longstanding fight against the death penalty. “This country has a rich history of executing the wrong people when they look like they are in my community — whether you’re talking about a woman 100 years ago or a 14-year-old boy,” he says. “I’m not surprised. I wish I could say I’m shocked. I’m just disgusted. Why are we so frivolous with the death penalty?”
Much like the death penalty, the use of rap lyrics in criminal trials has its roots in racism, says University of Richmond Professor Erik Nielson, author of Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America. Over the last 50 years — since the birth of rap — there have been over 800 cases of lyrics being used against people in court, he says. A small fraction of those people were white. “This is a practice that almost exclusively impacts young Black and Latino men,” says Nielson, who contributed to Liles’ brief. “I think that prosecutors sometimes knowingly, sometimes perhaps not, play upon and perpetuate the stereotypes that many people still have about these young men of color, and use that to secure convictions. There is no question that race is at the center of this practice.”
Demarius Cummings Courtesy Lucy Adams and Moira Fett Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson and California Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove agree; they’re the authors of the Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act, a proposed federal bill that would prevent courts from using creative expression as evidence in criminal and civil trials. “This case is deeply disturbing,” says Kamlager-Dove. “To execute a young man because of something that he wrote is, in my mind, beyond the pale and injustice to the criminal justice system,” she adds, referring to the fact that Broadnax’s lyrics were used during the sentencing phase.
“It was a racist prosecution,” Johnson adds. “They appealed to the racist instincts and the ignorant instincts of the jurors and came up with the verdict that they were seeking, which was the death penalty.”
The prosecutor, who is no longer with the DA’s office, did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Broadnax’s supporters aren’t sure what to expect from the flurry of filings going before the court. They should hear on Monday, April 27, whether the Supreme Court sees fit to accept the briefs on lyrics and the jury. If so, Broadnax’s execution could be stayed while the facts of his trial are considered. He could also be recommended clemency by the Pardons and Parole Board, but Governor Greg Abbott would need to grant a commutation of execution, which he’s only done once before.
Broadnax has his detractors as well: namely the families of Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler. Butler’s mother, Theresa, posted on Facebook: “The defense is trying their ‘Hail Mary Pass’ and it’s all a lie!! Don’t believe that the latest fake confession, after 17 years, is going to change the cold blooded killer’s planned execution date.” Swan’s mother, Jean, and his sister, Deborah Burkhardt, previously both wrote to the court asking for an execution date to be chosen, according to KERA News.
