Tiana Krasniqi, from Lewisham, South East London, is convinced her husband was innocent of the crimes he was executed for and claims McKayla Butler, whose dad Matthew was killed, knows it too
Tiana Krasniqi married convicted double murderer James Broadnax inside jail
The British wife of a convicted US death row murderer says she has become pals with the daughter of one of his victims.
Tiana Krasniqi, 31, and McKayla Butler, whose dad was Matthew Butler, one of the two men James Broadnax was convicted of gunning down during a robbery, struck up a bond after making contact with each other at the start of this year.
The law school graduate claims McKayla, 19, did not want Broadnax, 37, to be executed and “knew he didn’t do it”. And she says McKayla had planned to meet Broadnax before he was put to death by lethal injection last Thursday.
READ MORE: British wife of death row killer warns ‘you got it wrong’ after husband’s last words at executionREAD MORE: Double murderer’s British prison wife screams ‘I love you’ as he receives lethal injection
Broadnax was convicted of gunning down and robbing music producers Matthew Butler and Stephen Swan in a recording studio car park in Garland, Dallas, in 2008. His cousin Demarius Cummings, who was jailed for life without parole over the same crime, has since claimed he pulled the trigger.
Prosecutors had long insisted Broadnax was the gunman, pointing to his own confession, but Broadnax later insisted it was false and his legal team later claimed he was under the influence of the drug phencyclidine, known as PCP, at the time of the interviews.
Tiana, from Lewisham, South East London, said: “Back in December, January, McKayla Butler, who is Matthew Butler’s daughter, got in touch with me. Obviously I had to ask the lawyers if it was OK for me to speak to her because James wanted me to speak to her.
“He was not allowed to speak to none of the victims’ families. I had spoken to McKayla for two and a half hours the first call and we had a very heart-to-heart phone call. We both cried and we decided to stay in touch.
“I stayed in touch with McKayla and McKayla knew that James didn’t do it. So it was a situation where she was not for James being executed. McKayla was actually supposed to meet James because James wanted to meet McKayla. The victim support people said that everything that you and McKayla have a conversation about will be used against you in court.”
Tiana added: “In that moment that got stopped because anything that he had said during PCP and being loyal to his cousins is being used against him even now and he’s passed, so why are we going to put his words before a court that is not fair, that is racist. They create procedures to protect themselves to lie. Make it make sense. So McKayla was never able to speak to James, but James really really really wanted to speak to McKayla because he really wanted to tell her how he felt about her losing her dad.”
Speaking on her TikTok account Tiana added: “I love McKayla Butler. I love the fact that she is doing so well with her life. I love the fact that she’s getting married in a couple of weeks. She cried with me when I told her about Demarius confessing. She knew about the DNA, she knew about everything.”
Prosecutors said Broadnax had confessed to the double murder and had shown no remorse over it. However, speaking in a prison video filmed in a last-ditch bid to stop the execution, Broadnax’s cousin Demarius Cummings claimed responsibility. He said: “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 Bullard, Steve Swan.”
Lawyers for Broadnax claimed the confession was supported by forensic evidence and that Cummings’ DNA, not Broadnax’s, was found on the murder weapon. But despite a last-ditch appeal, officials pressed ahead with the execution at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, about 70 miles north of Houston.
Theresa Butler, mother of victim Matthew and grandmother to McKayla, said: “This so-called confession from Cummings is just a stall tactic by Broadnax’s desperate defence team. It’s all a lie.”
Speaking about her conversations with McKayla, Tiana said: “She told me some stuff, some very private stuff and one thing that really stood out to me was that she kept saying that growing up in her life she always wanted to know the truth of what happened. However, her grandma and her grandma’s sister would tell her a different story compared to her mother.
“I had the assumption that she knew what was going on in the background and when I told her that her grandma and her grandma’s sister wanted to be there, and I showed her some stuff, she was disgusted. She said that she was disgusted and she apologised that that was all happening.”
Broadnax’s attorneys had also claimed their client’s constitutional rights were violated as prosecutors allegedly eliminated potential jurors during his trial on the basis of race. 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.
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. Broadnax’s lawyers also alleged prosecutors further violated his constitutional rights by using rap lyrics he wrote as evidence that he was a violent and dangerous person. During the trial, the prosecution presented the jury with a selection of rap lyrics that alluded to murder, robbery and drugs, to make the case for execution.
Tiana has said she continues to suffer flashbacks from having watched her husband die. She said: “I miss him so much, I keep having flashbacks to the execution, I get panic attacks.
“One minute I feel OK and the next the world is crushing down. When it’s silent, my heart beats so fast and I get scared. I keep thinking what else could I have done. The reality that he is not coming back anymore randomly hits me hard. They ended my husband’s life right before my eyes.”
Previously recounting the harrowing moment, Tiana said: “His last words to me was ‘don’t give up’ and ‘I love you’, we spoke to each other the whole time he was strapped in the gurney. His head jerked back and couldn’t finish his last word and his head fell looking at me and he closed his eyes.
“I screamed ‘open your eyes’ and told him I loved him and sorry I failed him. I dropped to the ground and they picked me up and told me I had to wait for 20 mins till he died. We had promised that we would look at each other and talk to each other whilst it was happening. The whole thing felt like the final destination movie.”
Tiana, who left her daughter in the UK to cross the Atlantic to be with her new man, has been left angered by media reports Broadnax passed peacefully after being given a fatal dose of pentobarbital in a Texas prison just hours after the US Supreme Court denied his final appeal.
Writing on her TikTok account, Tiana added: “I watched his lips go blue, his face go blue and then his veins on his forehead appeared. He suffered. His body struggled. So what part of that did he die peacefully?”.
