A North Texas man who claimed he wasn’t the shooter in a fatal robbery that killed two people nearly 18 years ago was executed by lethal injection on Thursday evening.

His British wife – a law school graduate who met him on death row in 2024 – was convinced of his innocence until the very end, and desperately threw herself against the window of his execution chamber as she watched him die, shouting ‘I love you’.

James Broadnax, 37, was condemned for the 2008 deaths of two men outside a suburban Dallas music studio, whom prosecutors say Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, fatally shot and robbed.

Earlier on Thursday, the US Supreme Court denied a request by Broadnax’s attorneys to stop his execution, after multiple appeals arguing he was innocent.

It’s a firm conviction shared by his wife, Tiana Krasniqi, a 31-year-old from Lewisham in south-east London, who met Broadnax when she began researching racial disparities across the US justice system as part of her master’s degree in International Human Rights at the University of Law.

‘To those who want him dead. Knowing he didn’t do it. Take me instead of him.That’s how confident I am,’ she wrote in the caption to a tearful TikTok video, posted hours before her husband’s death.

Broadnax was pronounced dead last night after receiving a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, about 70 miles north of Houston, but his lawyers and wife were insistent that there’s a litany of chilling evidence which proves his execution was a gross miscarriage of justice.

One important detail is that Broadnax’s cousin, Cummings, recently released a video from prison confessing to being the shooter.  

James Broadnax was pronounced dead on Thursday evening after receiving a lethal injection in front of his British wife Tiana Krasniqi 

Ms Krasniqi poses for a photo wearing her wedding dress at Tigerville Park in Livingston, Texas on April 14

Ms Krasniqi wearing her wedding ring at the same park with the name James tattooed in red on her forearm

Prosecutors say Broadnax and his cousin were responsible for the deaths of Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in the parking lot of Butler’s recording studio in Garland.

While Broadnax was condemned to death, Cummings was sentenced to life without parole. 

But in an effort to prevent Broadnax’s execution, Cummings recently confessed to the crime.

‘I’m really gonna tell it like it’s supposed to be told, that it was me, that I was the killer. I shot Matthew… [and] Steve Swan,’ he said.

Broadnax’s lawyers said in court filings with the high court that Cummings’ confession is ‘corroborated by the fact that his DNA, and not Mr Broadnax’s, was found on the murder weapon and in the pocket of one of the victims’.

Broadnax’s attorneys also launched an appeal claiming his constitutional rights were violated, because prosecutors eliminated potential jurors during his trial on the basis of race. 

The lawyers alleged prosecutors dismissed all seven potential black jurors, ‘utilising a spreadsheet during jury selection that bolded only the names of every black juror,’ according to court documents. 

One black juror was later reinstated to the jury. Broadnax was black. 

In a 1986 ruling known as Batson v Kentucky, the US Supreme Court determined that excluding jurors because of their race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. 

Prosecutors further violated Broadnax’s constitutional rights by using some of the rap lyrics he wrote as evidence that he was a violent and dangerous person, in order to secure a death sentence, his lawyers alleged.

During the trial, the prosecution presented the jury with a selection rap lyrics that alluded to murder, robbery and drugs, to make the case for execution.

Speaking to ITV’s This Morning earlier this month, Tiana said: ‘He had about 40 pages of rap lyrics, and when it came to the guilty verdict, the jurors had asked to see the rap lyrics twice before they made a decision to see if he was of future dangerousness.

‘They tried to make him out as a psychopath but nobody ever evaluated him directly.’

A number of A-list rappers, including Travis Scott, TI and Killer Mike, had filed briefs at the Supreme Court in support of Broadnax’s appeal. 

Broadnax was executed for the 2008 shooting deaths of two men outside a suburban Dallas music studio

The pair met in 2024 after Tiana Krasniqi began researching racial disparities across the US justice system as part of her master’s degree in International Human Rights

Speaking to ITV’s This Morning earlier this month, Tiana Krasniqi admitted the wedding ceremony was ‘not the most romantic’ 

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British woman screams ‘I love you’ as her US Death Row killer husband is executed in Texas 

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began, Broadnax urged his supporters to keep fighting. 

‘Don’t give up,’ he said, and was stopped mid-sentence by a gasp. He shook his head briefly and all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 21 minutes later, at 6.47pm CDT. 

Prosecutors maintain Broadnax confessed to the shooting, telling reporters during jailhouse interviews that ‘I pulled the trigger,’ and that he had no remorse. 

But Broadnax had since said his confession was false because at the time he didn’t care about his life, while his lawyers say he was under the influence of drugs during the television interviews. 

In the weeks before his execution, Tiana fought to get her husband’s death sentence overturned.

She claimed that police and prosecutors did not follow proper procedure during the investigation and prosecution of the case.

She said: ‘He was under the influence of PCP (phencyclidine) when he was interviewed, he had only been interviewed four hours after the arrest and he had made clear to the police he was high.

‘They did put five interviewers in front of him and he took the blame for something that he didn’t do, and he acted in a way that showed he was under the influence.

‘They had excluded all African American jurors from the case until the last minute… they only added one, and within that time, there was the questioning of the jurors, and it wasn’t the most racially neutral.’

Broadnax was defiant in a final statement in which he also sought forgiveness from the victims’ relatives. Seven relatives, including parents of each of the victims, were present.

‘I prayed to God for your forgiveness,’ he said, when asked by the warden if he had a final statement.

‘Despite what you think about me, I hope to God that prayer was answered. But no matter what you think about me, Texas got it wrong. I’m innocent, the facts of my case should speak for itself. Period,’ he said.

In a post to her TikTok following her husband’s execution, Tiana wrote: ‘They killed my husband.

‘My husband suffered so bad from the lethal injection that he had a nosebleed and bruising on his neck. The families laughed as they watched. Is that justice?’

Just days before he was executed, Broadnax married Tiana, a law school graduate and mother-of-one, in a ceremony at the Allan B Polunsky Unit in Texas.

After reaching out to Broadnax for her master’s research, the pair quickly struck up a romance via email, then speaking ‘six to seven hours a day’, which deepened their connection.

Tiana travelled to Texas for the first time last year to meet him face-to-face.

They spent 90 days with each other before getting married, which she has admitted ‘wasn’t the most romantic’.

Speaking to This Morning, she said: ‘It’s behind glass… Texas have a very strict rule about no contact with death row inmates.

‘It’s a very quick 20-minute ceremony, you have an officiant, you say your vows and that’s it and it’s time to go.’

She said she had ‘no support’ from her loved ones, adding: ‘Nobody is happy, it’s not your typical, conventional relationship, there’s not been any support.

‘It’s fine, I completely understand and I’m not going to hold any grudges but at the same time, people have been to prison and come out and have become better people… if it happened, God willing, that he got to come out I can imagine the same thing happening and he could change his life as he plans to do.

‘Nobody is going to understand it, but it’s okay.’

Speaking prior to his execution, she concluded optimistically: ‘It’s been a process, it’s been a lot of conversations, a lot of prayer, you still have hope because the evidence is so overwhelming that he didn’t commit the crime.

‘You’d hope that people do stand up and fight for somebody that didn’t do the crime.’

Theresa Butler, victim Matthew Butler’s mother, had called for the execution to proceed.

‘This so called confession from Cummings is just a stall tactic by Broadnax’s desperate defence team. It’s all a lie,’ she wrote in a post on social media.

Broadnax was the third person put to death in 2026 in Texas and the 10th in the country. 

Throughout history, Texas has held more executions than any other state.

About an hour before Broadnax’s execution on Thursday, Florida put to death James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, for beating and choking his 13-year-old step-niece to death.