James Garfield Broadnax v. Texas

Where a defendant was convicted and sentenced to death for shooting and killing two victims without a finding of “reckless indifference to human life” under Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137 (1987), whether new, previously unavailable evidence from his codefendant, recanting his previous statements and declaring under penalty of perjury that he, and not the defendant, shot and killed the two victims, entitles the defendant to relief under the Eighth Amendment.

Whether the State’s racially discriminatory strikes of all seven qualified prospective Black jurors, shown by it identifying prospective jurors by race on a spreadsheet used during jury selection, by a notation that its “only concern” about a juror was his “age + race,” by newly disclosed evidence of notations of race on a chart used during jury selection at the codefendant’s trial, and by newly obtained affidavits from three struck prospective Black jurors, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). (I)