{"id":240829,"date":"2026-04-08T19:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/240829\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T19:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:52:07","slug":"court-dismisses-confession-in-dallas-county-death-penalty-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/240829\/","title":{"rendered":"Court dismisses confession in Dallas County death penalty case"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state\u2019s highest criminal court has declined to intervene in James\u00a0Broadnax\u2019s death penalty case, arguing it is not enough for another man to take responsibility<\/a> for the 2008 shootings when\u00a0Broadnax has yet to recant his own confessions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Applicant\u2019s claim that he lied when he confessed must fail,” a judge wrote in the opinion obtained Wednesday by The Dallas Morning News. “He hasn\u2019t recanted his confessions, his own lies \u2014 if that\u2019s what they are \u2014 do not give rise to a due process violation, he is not actually innocent or innocent of the death penalty, and his claims are barred because they do not fall within an exception to the subsequent application prohibition.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

According to previous reporting from The News,\u00a0Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, set out to rob the two men, but left with only $2 and a 1995 Ford.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last month, Cummings signed a written declaration stating it was him who shot both Swan and Butler, not Broadnax. Cummings said he persuaded his cousin, who was 19 at the time, to take the blame based on the circumstances of their criminal records.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cummings, he said, had been convicted of other offenses, including robbery, while Broadnax only had a charge pertaining to marijuana possession.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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,” Cummings wrote. “It was my decision to come clean.”<\/p>\n

The discrepancy cited by the court occurred in 2008, shortly after the murders, when Broadnax and Cummings spoke to numerous reporters from jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I murdered them both,” Broadnax said then. “No hesitation or nothing.”<\/p>\n

Broadnax’s attorneys have said he and Cummings were under the influence of PCP, a hallucinogenic drug, when they made\u00a0their statements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is a developing story and will be updated.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The state\u2019s highest criminal court has declined to intervene in James\u00a0Broadnax\u2019s death penalty case, arguing it is not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,92331,87998,89138,92330,89218],"class_list":{"0":"post-240829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news","11":"tag-tp-courts","12":"tag-tp-dallas","13":"tag-tp-dallas-county","14":"tag-tp-garland","15":"tag-tp-homicide"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}