Brit married to death row inmate will 'never forget' what he said on morning of execution

Brit married to death row inmate will 'never forget' what he said on morning of execution James Broadnax was executed in Texas earlier this year and hours before his death he was comforted by his new wife — a British law graduate and single mum who fell in love with him A Brit who travelled almost 5,000 miles to Texas where she married a death row inmate says she will “never forget” what he told her hours before his execution — which was so horrific even prison staff cried. Law graduate Tiana Broadnax, who is from London, encountered convicted double killer James Broadnax, 37, through her academic research. And while she ended up falling in love with him, she also developed a strong belief that he was entirely innocent and fought to save him from an early death. However, on April 30, Broadnax was given a dose of lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. This was punishment for fatally shooting Christian music producers Stephen Swan, 26, and Matthew Butler, 28, outside a studio in Dallas in 2008. Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, who were both 19 at the time, tried to rob the men while high on weed and PCP. Cummings was given life without the possibility of parole while Broadnax was sentenced to death after initially confessing, which he later retracted because he was high on drugs. Huge efforts were made to stop Broadnax being executed after it was pointed out that it was his cousin’s DNA that was found on the murder weapon and on the victim’s clothing. What’s more, Cummings himself released a video confessing to the crime, saying: “I’m really gonna tell it like it’s supposed to be told, that it was me, that I was the killer.” And before Broadnax was executed, Dr Phil raised awareness about the case, where he said: “I’m not here today to tell you that James Broadnax is innocent. I’m not here to tell you he's guilty. What I am here to do is look at the facts, all of them. And ask the hard questions that someone needs to be asking because a man’s life is on the line and the clock is running out.” While all this was going on in the background, Tiana visited Broadnax on the morning of his execution, where she found him in floods of tears. She said he had been crying so much that she was left unsure what to do before adding to LADbible stories: “I got him his favourite Powerade and beef jerky because he couldn’t eat. So I said ‘just eat something’ and he was just crying. And I’ll never forget. He leaned back and he said, ‘I never knew how loved I could be. I never knew I was worthy of being fought for.’ “And I said, ‘You need to know you are loved. People are fighting for you.’ And he kept saying to me, ‘I never knew people could fight for me. I never knew I was worthy.’ “How do you console somebody who is at the last hours of his life? And he just kept crying and we cried and we took our last pictures and 12-o-clock comes and I get an escort team to pull me out to take me out. Ensure stories just like this always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as a Preferred Source in your Google search settings “They had to follow me halfway to the car so I didn't follow the van that he was being transported to Huntsville with. James got put in the van which is an execution van to get transported to Huntsville where the death chamber is.” When Tiana reached the death chamber, she dropped to her knees and screamed, after seeing Broadnax, who she had married two weeks earlier, strapped to a gurney with his arms crossed in a crucifix style. She said he looked like a “flipping experiment” and she recalled: “He was like, ‘I love you queen, don’t give up, I love you queen, don’t give up.’ As he said ‘don’t’, his head jerked back and he went [gasping noise] and then his eyes rolled up and he dropped. And I screamed.”