A London mum whose husband was put to death 5,000 miles away in Texas said watching him die was ‘utterly traumatising’.
Tiana Broadnax flew to Huntsville, Texas, to watch her husband James be given the lethal injection on April 30. He died 40 minutes later while strapped to a gurney.
Tiana said: ‘The first time I ever touched him was when he lay dead in front of me.’
It comes as murderer Christa Pike survived two lethal injections in Tennessee yesterday. Her heart was still beating and she was heard snoring by witnesses before the curtains were drawn and her microphone was cut off.
Pike, who was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, has been taken to hospital, her attorneys say.
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Tiana said watching a loved one be put to death is ‘utterly traumatising’ and even sent her into a ‘psychotic state’ and hallucinated he was standing outside of the prison.
Her husband James, 37, was sentenced to death following the deaths of two people during a robbery 18 years ago. He and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, had attacked Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in a parking lot.
At the time of his arrest, James claimed he was the shooter, something he later retracted. Cummings, who was given life without parole, has recently confessed to having fired the shots. All of the black jurors were dismissed during the trial.
Tiana fought to have his sentence repealed, but after spending years exploring all legal avenues, James’s execution date was confirmed.
She told Metro: ‘It feels so isolating. No one in the UK can possibly relate to what I have been through.’
On the day of James’s execution, Tiana was taken to the viewing room as her husband was strapped to a gurney. Even in his final lucid moments, they were not allowed to be in the same room together.
A week later, Tiana was back at home in London. She is unable to go back to work and her studies full-time, so is focusing on looking after her daughter.
‘I was James’s PA, advocate and therapist full time. I was looking after him and my daughter full-time and getting about four hours of sleep a night,’ she said.
‘Now he is gone, the world feels a lot emptier.’
Meanwhile Tennessee’s Department of Corrections has not yet confirmed Pike’s condition.
The state’s governor, Bill Lee, confirmed he has ordered a review ‘to determine exactly what occured,’ ABC News reports.
He added that the remaining scheduled execution will not be carried out this year.
It would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.
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