After languishing on death row in Texas for nearly two decades, James G. Broadnax was executed on April 30, 2026.
In 2009, a nearly all-white jury convicted him of robbery and double murder. Broadnax’s lawyers believed the initial rejection of all Black candidates from the jury pool was unconstitutional. They also believed it was unconstitutional that prosecutors used 40 pages of Broadnax’s handwritten lyrics, which they characterized as “gangsta rap” that doubled as a “self-admission” of Broadnax’s criminal “mentality.”
