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Tiana Krasniqi poses for a photo while wearing her wedding dress at Tigerville Park in Livingston, TX, Tuesday, April 14, 2026. Earlier in the day, Krasniqi married James Broadnax, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed on April 30, at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit.<\/p>\n
Juan Figueroa\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
LIVINGSTON \u2014 It\u2019s almost time for the ceremony, and\u00a0Tiana Krasniqi is changing into her wedding dress in the back of her Kia Soul, parked in the prison lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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She grabs her marriage license and her vows Tuesday evening before heading inside; first through security, then to visitation, where James\u00a0Broadnax is\u00a0standing <\/a>behind a pane of\u00a0plexiglass. Krasniqi recalls catching the sheen in his eyes, tears building at the sight of her in an ivory gown.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Tiana Krasniqi talks on the phone with James Broadnax, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed on April 30, while wearing her wedding dress at Tigerville Park in Livingston, TX, Tuesday, April 14, 2026. Earlier in the day, Krasniqi married Broadnax at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit.<\/p>\n Juan Figueroa\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n The groom is set to die in 16 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n Krasniqi likens his execution date \u2014 April 30 \u2014 to a storm cloud hanging over their heads. She feels it most when they exchange their vows over phones on either side of a visitation booth, an officiant and two corrections officers\u00a0in the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n For better, for worse, in sickness and in health … what good does it do to make promises for a life that might never see May?<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Instead, they add:\u00a0In this life and the afterlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two years ago, Krasniqi and Broadnax forged a friendship through letters, when Krasniqi was living in London and working toward a master\u2019s degree in human rights law. She found Broadnax while researching racial disparities on death row, wanting to understand how being a Black man could make a callous system even more unforgiving.\u00a0<\/p>\n It took only a few months, she said, to fall in love. The more Krasniqi and Broadnax wrote, the more they found in common, from their childhoods to their humor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Broadnax proposed to Krasniqi on a Saturday last spring. She remembers how it felt to leave him at the prison, how she stopped at the end of the driveway and sobbed, rolling the window down to hold her hand out and pray.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tiana Krasniqi wears her wedding ring at Tigerville Park in Livingston, TX, Tuesday, April 14, 2026. Earlier in the day, Krasniqi married James Broadnax, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed on April 30, at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit.<\/p>\n Juan Figueroa\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n Krasniqi decided to forgo her degree to focus on Broadnax\u2019s case. She leaves England for weeks at a time, traveling between Little Rock, Ark., where Broadnax\u2019s family lives, and the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where he has spent nearly 17 years in solitary confinement for all but two hours a day.\u00a0<\/p>\n This much is undisputed: In 2008, when Broadnax and his cousin Demarius Cummings were both 19, they set out to rob two music producers outside their Garland studio. By the time they left, Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler were dead, and the cousins had $2 and a 1995 Ford to show for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n There was never reason to believe anyone but Broadnax was to blame.\u00a0He confessed to the killings from jail in interviews eternalized on video. He told reporters at the time he had little to live for, and even fewer regrets.<\/p>\n In March,\u00a0faced with an imminent end to his cousin\u2019s life, Cummings decided it was time to clear his conscience<\/a>. In a signed declaration, Cummings explained the reason only his DNA was found on the murder weapon was because he was responsible for the shooting.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was his idea, he said. The burglary, the gunfire, the lies. All of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cummings said he persuaded Broadnax to take the blame on the foundation of a misguided hope: That no court would send a 19-year-old, one with nothing more than a marijuana charge, to his death. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Texas\u2019 highest criminal court discarded Cummings\u2019 statement<\/a> earlier this month, arguing it held little weight when Broadnax had never recanted his own\u00a0admission.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWho would have believed him?\u201d Krasniqi, 31, asked during an interview with The Dallas Morning News this week, sitting on a park bench overlooking Lake Livingston. \u201cIt would have been his word against Demarius\u2019. It was always a losing game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tiana Krasniqi and James Broadnax pose for a photo in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Tiana Krasniqi <\/p>\n To feel closer to a man she can\u2019t even touch, has never touched, Krasniqi took herself on a road trip through Broadnax\u2019s life. She traveled to Bramble Courts, the apartment complex in Texarkana where he lived with his mom. To the patch of land in Hope, Ark., where his grandmother\u2019s house once stood, and the hiding spot Broadnax would run to when he needed an escape.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Sometimes, Krasniqi would happen upon\u00a0people who remembered him. A neighbor in Texarkana told her\u00a0Broadnax was a kind kid who struggled a lot, that it was clear he wasn\u2019t being taken care of. A\u00a0clerk at the store where Broadnax used to buy his grandmother\u2019s groceries described him fondly. A sweet boy, he said. Never caused any problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n So many people,\u00a0Krasniqi recalled, said they wished they had taken him in. They wonder now if all of this could have been prevented. Maybe, they think, if\u00a0Broadnax had known how it felt to be loved, he never would have ended up in Garland that day.\u00a0<\/p>\n Because he did, the state plans to strap Broadnax, 37, to a gurney inside the death chamber at the end of the month in Huntsville.\u00a0They’ll ask him for his final words and push a lethal solution into his veins. \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n His wife will serve as his witness.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tiana Krasniqi poses for a photo while wearing her wedding dress at Tigerville Park in Livingston, TX, Tuesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1551,27,29,28,89512,92331,89138,89218],"class_list":{"0":"post-254137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-feature","9":"tag-texas","10":"tag-texas-headlines","11":"tag-texas-news","12":"tag-tp-texas","13":"tag-tp-courts","14":"tag-tp-dallas-county","15":"tag-tp-homicide"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254137","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=254137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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