Inside James Broadnax’s Last Days on Death Row — The Man Who Laughed at a Grieving Mother | Texas 

Inside James Broadnax’s Last Days on Death Row — The Man Who Laughed at a Grieving Mother | Texas 

You shot my son. >> [music] >> In cold blood, you took him from me. Now you will face justice. She stood in that courtroom and told the man who shot her son, crawling, bleeding, [music] begging to live, that it would have been better if he had never been born. You killed two young men now. >> Rather they life than mine.

Do you have any remorse? None whatsoever. Doing it like What do you think’s going to happen to you now? Whatever they throw at me. Hopefully they’ll appeal. Hopefully? Yeah. Why do you hope that? >> Cuz if they give me life, I’mma kill somebody else. Straight up. I’m telling you right now. I can’t do no [ __ ] life.

 I’mma go crazy. So you don’t want the death penalty. They better pick one. Or you’re going to have some more bodies. And he laughed. Not a nervous laugh. Not the kind of thing you brush off as discomfort or nerves. He sat there, back turned to the room, and he laughed. I need you to understand what kind of person laughs in that moment.

And then I need you to understand what happened to him next. >> [music] >> Before we talk about the man who pulled the trigger, I want you to meet the two men who never made it home that night. Because every time a story like this gets told, the killer becomes the headline, and the victims become a detail.

 [music] That’s not happening here. Matthew Butler was 28 years old. He grew up with music in his bones, specifically Christian music. [music] And somewhere along the way, uh he stopped just loving it and started building something out of it. In 2005, he founded Zion Gate Records in Garland, Texas. Not a corporate label, not a business pitch, a passion project he built with his own hands, brick by brick, because he believed in something.

He had a wife, two young children, and on the night of June 18th, 2008, he was exactly where he was supposed to be, at his own studio, doing the one thing he loved most in this world. He had no idea what was coming. If this story deserves to be told, if Matthew and Steven deserve to be remembered, the algorithm needs a signal.

A like takes 2 seconds. That’s it. Steven Swan was 26, Matthew’s audio engineer and closest friend in that studio. His mother would later take the stand during the trial, and the way she talked about her son stopped the entire room. Then she said he’d taught himself everything, how to write songs, >> [music] >> how to play instruments, how to sing.

She said it the way only a mother can describe someone she is devastatingly proud of. He worked all his life to get to that level of accomplishment and ability, and it just got cut off. That night, Matthew and Steven finished up at the studio and stepped outside into the parking lot. It was around 1:00 in the morning, and that was the last moment either of them had.

 Let’s back up, because what happened in that parking lot didn’t start in that parking lot. Earlier that night, James Broadnax and his 19-year-old cousin Derrius Cummings boarded a DART commuter train in Dallas. They weren’t going to a job. They weren’t visiting family. They had a plan, and the plan was brutally simple. They were going to rob someone.

 Then Broadnax would later explain in his own words, in a television interview he gave willingly, why they headed to Garland specifically. That’s where all the rich white folks stay at. They had a gun. Cummings would later explain to a news station exactly how they got it. >> [music] >> They traded an AK-47 as collateral for a pistol.

He said they didn’t plan to shoot anyone. Then he caught himself. No, I take that back. I did tell him we’d probably have to pop them a few times or whatever. I did. But still, I didn’t think he was going to do it. So before they ever stepped off that train, >> [music] >> violence was already on the table. The gun was already loaded with intent.

Cummings himself put it there. They arrived in Garland. They walked, [music] and eventually they spotted two men stepping out of a building late at night. They didn’t know who they were. Yeah, they didn’t care. Cummings walked up and asked for a cigarette, >> [music] >> just to close the distance, and then Broadnax drew the pistol.

What I’m about to read are not a reporter’s words, not a prosecutor’s summary. These are James Broadnax’s own words, given calmly on camera to a news station, after the murders. >> [music] >> I shot him and he stumbled back. I shot the driver. He hit the ground, but he leaned up like he was going to try to get back up.

So I shot him in the head. Then his homeboy, I shot him again. But he was still trying to run off. I knew he was going to die anyway, but just to make sure, pop. Pop. The man he called the driver was Steven Swan, 26 years old. The man he called his homeboy was Matthew Butler, >> [music] >> 28 years old, father of two, whose wife was home waiting for him.

 And the forensic evidence confirmed what happened to Matthew in his final moments. He was shot in the arm, in the chest, in the back. >> [music] >> He was crawling on the ground trying to survive, and Broadnax shot him again. I made sure they was dead. Then they crouched down and went through their pockets. Two dead men on a sidewalk outside a Christian recording studio.

>> [music] >> They found $2. They grabbed the keys to Steven Swan’s Crown Victoria, got in, and drove away. They didn’t call anyone. >> [music] >> They didn’t hesitate. They just left. Two men, $2, [music] and a mother who had to bury her son. If you’re still here, you already care. The comment section is right below this video.

Tell me what you think. The families deserve for this to be heard. Around 1:20 that morning, a passing bicyclist found Matthew Butler and Steven Swan on the sidewalk in front of Zion Gate Records. Both shot multiple times. >> [music] >> Both already dead. Two days later, a routine traffic stop caught them. The Crown Victoria still had its VIN.

Officers ran it. >> [music] >> It matched the double homicide in Garland. Broadnax and Cummings were arrested on the spot. Both charged with capital murder. Both held on a $1 million bond. And then, in a decision that defies explanation, both of them agreed to give television interviews from the Dallas County Jail.

Most people in that situation either proclaim innocence or stay quiet. >> [music] >> Some show remorse. Some try to explain. James Broadnax did none of those things. >> [music] >> He described the shootings in detail on camera with no visible emotion. And when NBC 5 reporter Ellen Goldberg asked him if he felt any remorse at all for the two men he had just killed, he looked at her and said, “Do I look like it?” When she asked what he would say to the victims’ families, he had nothing.

 Not a word. [music] He dismissed them without a second thought. When pressed about whether any of it mattered to him, “Not no more. I ain’t got no reason to live.” And then came the line that prosecutors would let hang in the air of that he didn’t even think he had a conscience. >> [music] >> Not that it was buried, not that it was damaged.

He said he didn’t think he had one at all. >> [music] >> His own defense attorney, the man whose entire job was to keep him alive, said something afterward that might be the most honest line in this entire case. “I’ve never seen a guy talk his way onto death row before, but we have now.” James Broadnax went to trial in Dallas in 2009.

He was 20 years old. The prosecution had a staggering case. They played the jailhouse interviews for the jury. They introduced rap lyrics he had written about murder, drug dealing, and specifically about not leaving witnesses behind. A gang detective testified about gang signs he flashed during his media appearances.

The defense argued he was under the influence of PCP the night of the murders. They built a portrait of a young man who had grown up in a world >> [music] >> where brutality felt ordinary, who had never been given a real chance at anything different. And something genuinely unexpected happened. From jail, Broadnax had written letters to both victims’ families.

 Real letters, expressing regret. Matthew Butler’s widow, Jamie Butler Cole, addressed the court. She said she had received his letter, and with a grace that stopped the room, she said she forgave him. Then Teresa Butler stood up, Matthew’s mother. She stood in front of the man who had shot her son multiple times and watched him crawl.

And she said what every person in that room already knew, but needed to hear. >> [music] >> “You stole our son.” Then she looked directly at him and said, “I couldn’t say it better than you said it yourself. It would have been better if you’d never been born.” And James Broadnax laughed. Sitting with his back to most of the room, he laughed.

The prosecutor, David Alex, watched it happen in real time. Even at this point, after seeing how many people he’s affected, he’s still over there laughing. The jury deliberated for 8 hours over 2 days. James Broadnax was sentenced to death. A mother watched the man who killed her son laugh in her face, and somehow had to go home that night.

 If that hit you the way it hit me, drop a comment, even just one word, >> [music] >> because silence feels wrong here. Texas death row is not the end of the legal road. In many ways, it is just [music] the beginning of a new one. In the years after his conviction, Broadnax’s attorneys filed 56 separate points of error from the 2009 trial.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed every single one, rejected them all, then the federal courts. And this is where it gets complicated. The central argument, racial discrimination during jury selection. The prosecution used nearly half of its peremptory strikes to eliminate all seven black prospective jurors from the pool.

The trial judge himself noted on the record that black jurors had been removed at a disproportionate rate. >> [music] >> One juror was restored as a result. But the most damaging piece didn’t surface until federal court, a spreadsheet created by prosecutors during jury selection that specifically bolded the names of black prospective jurors.

Only them. It had never been disclosed to the defense. Texas courts refused to admit it because it wasn’t part of the original state record. The Fifth Circuit upheld the conviction in 2021. His attorneys took it to the Supreme Court. >> [music] >> Two justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, publicly stated they would reverse the judgment.

 The full court declined to hear the case, >> [music] >> and the petition was denied in 2024. Then there is the matter of Darius Cummings, Broadnax’s cousin, the man on that train, the man who said they’d probably have to pop them, the man standing right there while two people were murdered. Cummings was not given the death penalty.

On April 30th, 2026, after spending 17 years on death row, James Garfield Broadnax will be executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. He will be 37 years old. >> [music] >> He will have spent more of his adult life inside a cell than outside of it. Texas does not offer a last meal.

Whatever he eats that day is whatever the prison cafeteria serves to everyone else. He will be given the opportunity to make a final statement. Whether he takes it and what he chooses to say, no one knows yet. His execution is expected to mark the 600th carried out by the state of Texas since capital punishment was reinstated.

Advocacy groups are currently circulating petitions asking Governor Greg Abbott for a stay of execution or clemency. >> [music] >> They point to the racial bias claims, the hidden spreadsheet, the sentencing disparity between Broadnax and his cousin. Whether any of that gains traction between now and April 30th, no [clears throat] one knows.

The teenager who told a television reporter he didn’t have a conscience is now a 37-year-old man who has spent nearly two full decades inside a cell. He has had nothing but time, time to think, time to sit with what he did, [music] time to understand in whatever way a person can come to understand something like this, the full weight of two lives ended for $2.

>> [music] >> From that cell, he wrote letters to both victims’ families. >> [music] >> He told his attorney repeatedly that he regretted what he had done. Matthew Butler’s widow said she forgave him, though she acknowledged she could not fully know what was truly in his heart. Teresa Butler, the mother who watched him laugh in open court, has not publicly said the same.

And here is the part of this story that doesn’t resolve neatly, no matter how many times you turn it over. Whether that man is genuinely different from the one who said pop, pop, just to make sure, only he knows. The law has decided at every level that it does not change what comes next. I’ve been sitting with this story for a while now, and I genuinely don’t know where I land on some of it.

Matthew Butler had a wife and two kids. Steven Swan had a mother who carried his memory into a courtroom and said he worked his whole life for something that just got cut off. And somewhere underneath all the appeals and the petitions and the scheduled date on a calendar, those two families have been living with this for 18 years.

So, tell me what you actually think. >> [music] >> Does time change anything? Does genuine remorse matter when two people are dead and the only thing taken from them was worth $2? Is what a person becomes after a crime enough, or does it not move the needle at all? Drop your thoughts in the comments. I read every single one.

>> [music] >> And if this story affected you the way it affected me, you already know what to do.