Broadnax v. Texas

Issue: (1) Whether the state’s use in a capital sentencing proceeding of rap lyrics composed by a Black defendant to argue to a nearly all-White jury that the Black defendant must be a violent and dangerous person because he wrote the rap lyrics, violates due process, fundamental fairness, and equal protection under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; and (2) whether the state’s introduction of a state-employed and out-of-court expert’s serology report and findings at trial, via the testimony of another expert who testified to and relied upon the absent expert’s out-of-court statements as a basis of the second expert’s own findings, violates the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution under Smith v. Arizona.