British woman who married death row killer recalls sobering moment she watched his execution

A heartbroken wife has opened up on the final 24 hours of her husband's life after he was sentenced to death despite a late appeal.

James Broadnax and his cousin Demarius Cummings were accused of fatally shooting two men during a robbery in Texas, which later saw James convicted of capital murder in 2009 and sentenced to death.

Demarius meanwhile was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and James would spend the next 17 years on death row in Texas, where his only solace was British pen pal friend Tiana Krasniqi.

The two became close after Krasniqi started her Master's degree in international human rights law, in which she concentrated on racial inequalities on Texas' death row.

This led her to Broadnax and they ended up falling for each other, with Krasniqi agreeing to marry the inmate before they even met in person.

Things became even more complex in April when Demarius signed a sworn declaration that it was him who shot the two men rather than James, but despite the late appeal, he was killed by lethal injection on 30 April 2026.

In an exclusive interview with LADbible, Krasniqi has now opened up about her husband's final moments and the conversations she had with him before his death.

She touched her husband James Broadnax for the first time after he had died (ITV)

She said: "I had unlimited visits for the three days. That morning, I went to see him at eight in the morning up until 12. Executions happened at 6pm in Texas because that's when the courts closed and you got your answer by that point. I went to see him and he had been crying. He had been crying so much that in that point, I didn't even know what to do. Everybody was telling me he's not going to get executed that day.

"Demarius Cummings admitted that he committed the crime and there's evidence to match it. And then by this point, the juror who had given them the death penalty had said the same thing, that they made the mistake and Dr Phil's fighting for him. We've got over 88,000 signatures of people fighting, everybody's going crazy. Everybody's trying to stop this execution around us. So there was like hope."

Despite the late hope, the mother of one of the victims suggested it was just a stall tactic and was 'all a lie', and some of the family members were present at his execution, where he protested his innocence until the last moment.

The situation was incredibly difficult for Tiana, who felt powerless to console James with the knowledge that these would be the final hours of his life, as well as the anger that his case hadn't been overturned despite his cousin's confession.

She added: "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 that I was worthy of my life being fought for." And I said, "You need to know you are loved. People are fighting for you." And he kept saying to me, "But I never knew people could fight for me. I never knew I was worthy."

"How do you console somebody who's at his last hours of his life? And he just kept crying and we cried and we cried and we took our last pictures."

After speaking to her husband on the phone for one last time, Tiana had a 'panic attack' when she was told about what was going to happen, and she joined others to watch as her husband was tied to a bed and given the injection that would end his life.

She recalled: I just see him. Lay down, strapped, belt, belt, belt. A bed sheet on him because he had belts all over his body and he was crossed-armed. He was in a crucifix style. And again, as soon as I turn left, he turns and we both look at each other in the eyes and I drop and I scream. And it's like they grab me up and they bring me closer to the window. And they had told me, "You're not allowed to bang the window because you will get arrested." But what's the point of banging the window? What's that going to do? It's not going to stop it. But what was even scarier was he had these plastic coverings on top of his arms. He just looked like a flipping experiment. He had a woman at the side of him in a suit, a woman at the top of his head with his spiritual advisor. And then there was only one thin wall separating me and the families, screaming and crying."

After James' death, Tiana has been even more vocal about his case and the circumstances in which he died, claiming that it was her intention to get him out of there when they first met.

She concluded: "I will always feel like I failed him because my job was to bring the truth and to get him free, or at least out of death row. And I went to pick up a body."