HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS — Lawyers for Texas death row inmate James Broadnax have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his scheduled April 30 execution, arguing that his death sentence was imposed in violation of due process and equal protection because prosecutors used his rap lyrics as evidence of future dangerousness. Broadnax is set to die by lethal injection of pentobarbital in Huntsville, Texas.

Broadnax was 19 years old when he and his cousin were convicted in 2009 of murdering two white men, Matthew Butler and Stephen Swan, during a robbery in Garland, Texas. Under Texas law, jurors must be persuaded that a defendant poses a threat of "future dangerousness" to impose a death sentence.

During the sentencing phase, prosecutors presented the jury with 40 pages of Broadnax's notebooks found in a suitcase after his arrest. As a teenager, Broadnax had filled notebooks with handwritten rap lyrics. Prosecutors selected lyrics depicting violence, murder, robbery, and drugs while omitting lyrics addressing redemption and love. In closing arguments, the prosecution argued that Broadnax's writings proved he was a member of a criminal gang and whose lyrics were a literal homicidal master plan. The lead prosecutor told the jury, "The root word of gangsta rap is gangster." Jurors asked to see his notebooks twice during deliberations before sentencing him to death.

The petition argues Texas's use of his lyrics violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Dallas County prosecutors initially excluded all Black jurors, though the trial judge reinstated one. Broadnax had no prior criminal record other than a conviction for non-violent marijuana possession. He has spent more than 16 years in a 6-by-10-foot death row cell.

Kevin Liles, who leads the nonprofit Free Our Art, helped assemble an amicus brief signed by 16 artists including Young Thug, Killer Mike, T.I., Fat Joe, and Anthony Anderson, alongside art organizations and academic experts. "I haven't seen anything so egregious in this space. A young man sentenced to death based not on evidence, but on allegations that he was a 'future threat' because of his rap lyrics. If the supreme court does not intervene, we're actually going to put a kid to death based on his lyrics," Liles said.

The amicus brief cites Johnny Cash's lyric "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" from "Folsom Prison Blues" and Bob Marley and Eric Clapton's "I Shot the Sheriff" as examples of lyrics never treated as criminal evidence. The brief also states that no one assumed Hall & Oates were stalkers, Beyoncé stole a Lexus, or the Trammps burned down buildings based on their songs.

The case follows that of rapper Jeffery Williams, known as Young Thug, whose lyrics were ruled admissible as evidence in 2023 by a trial judge in a Georgia racketeering case. Williams was arrested in 2022 on racketeering charges and was released in 2024 on time served after spending two years behind bars and pleading guilty to some charges. "This isn't about me or YSL. I always use my music as a form of artistic expression, and now I see that Black artists and rappers don't have that freedom," Williams said. Liles had spearheaded protests against the use of Williams's art in court before turning his attention to Broadnax's case.