Execution of man convicted of killing pastor in 2011 scheduled Wednesday

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Barring a last-minute stay, Steven Lawayne Nelson is set to be executed Wednesday evening for killing an Arlington pastor, a crime he has maintained he did not commit, though he admitted he was there for a robbery while the murder occurred. The execution would be Texas’ first in 2025.

On March 3, 2011, the then 24-year-old Nelson entered NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington to commit a robbery. In the process, officials said he suffocated 28-year-old Pastor Clint Dobson to death and assaulted 69-year-old Judy Elliott, who was so badly beaten her husband initially did not recognize her when he arrived at the church.

Nelson was arrested two days later when he was found driving Elliott’s car, which contained several items belonging to her and Dobson. A little over a year later, he was convicted of killing Dobson and sentenced to death.

Despite his conviction, Nelson has maintained his innocence through legal appeals and interviews. The now 37-year-old testified at trial, against his legal representation’s wishes, that while he was complicit in the robbery, he was just a lookout and didn’t enter the church until after an accomplice had killed Dobson. One of the two men Nelson claimed was an accomplice was charged but not indicted by a grand jury, and the other was not charged.

Nelson’s execution, which also would be the first in the United States in 2025, comes at a time in which death sentences and executions in Texas have reached record lows. The growing infrequency of executions, doubts on whether Nelson actually killed Dobson and the involvement of Dobson’s church have sparked conversations on the moral and religious implications of capital punishment.

After Nelson was convicted and sentenced to death in 2012, officials with First Baptist Arlington, NorthPointe’s parent church, released a statement seemingly approving his death sentence.

“We have asked God for the truth to be known and for justice to be served,” the statement said. “We now can confidently say that justice has been served and we will support the decision of this court.”

The Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to Nelson and several other inmates who have been executed across the country and an advocate for abolishing the death penalty, said Nelson’s case stands out, especially because of the statement from church officials.

“It is disgusting for a church to equate the love of God, the love of Jesus, with the love of executions, the love of killing,” Hood said.

Hood has been meeting with Nelson for months in preparation for the execution and to become “his best friend” before the state kills him. Even Nelson’s version of events — that he stepped over beaten and bloodied victims to steal their valuables — reflect a severe crime that requires severe punishment, Hood said. But the reverend argued execution in any case has little to do with Nelson’s culpability and more about the state.

“This is not a Robbie Roberson or Will Speer kind of feel-good type story. It's not that. What Steven did is evil, I mean tremendously evil,” Hood said. “[But] I think I would argue it's more about us and less about him.”

At the time, Tarrant County prosecutors charged Nelson alone with murder, pointing to blood spatter on Nelson’s shoes, pieces of Nelson’s belt at the scene and his possession of stolen items from the church. During the sentencing hearing, prosecutors also called a Tarrant County jail inmate to testify that Nelson had killed a cellmate during his incarceration leading up to the trial, but no charges were brought against Nelson in the inmate’s death.

In addition to the lack of charges brought against Nelson’s alleged accomplices, the judge’s instructions to the jury to rely on the law of parties, which states that a person can be criminally responsible for the actions of another person, also proved contentious for those disapproving of Nelson’s conviction. The instruction allowed the jury to convict Nelson based on one of two determinations: that Nelson was directly responsible for Dobson’s death, or that he was party to a robbery he should have anticipated would result in death. The jury did not specify which of the two it used to reach the guilty verdict, according to court documents.

Nelson filed multiple appeals in his 13 years on death row, claiming his trial did not adequately explore the involvement of the other two men, which he argued would have altered the verdict.

All of Nelson’s appeals have failed, the latest of which was for a stay of execution that was denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals just a week before his scheduled execution. Nelson’s legal team has appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming the criminal appeals court did not specify whether its denial was based on federal or state precedent.

Nelson, born in Oklahoma, suffered physical and sexual abuse throughout his childhood, which his defense team during his sentencing hearing claimed affected his criminal record prior to the Dobson murder. In conversations with Nelson, Hood said he recognizes how that abuse carried over through his life.

“I do think it's important to speak to the fact that this is somebody who had a horrendous childhood,” Hood said. “I think that it's important to certainly speak to the fact that this is somebody that society gave up on, and I think when the crime happens later, I think we have reaped what we sow.”

Nelson would be the first inmate executed in the U.S. since the Department of Justice released a report casting doubt on lethal injection being a painless method of capital punishment. In January, former Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded federal use of single-drug lethal injection — the same protocol Texas has used since 2014 — for its executions, citing evidence that it caused pulmonary edema. The DOJ report likened the effects of the pulmonary edema to waterboarding.

While the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure exempts those executed from autopsies, several autopsies performed on inmates executed by lethal injection in other states revealed increased lung weight caused by fluid.

Texas’ second execution of the year is scheduled on Feb. 15. Richard Tabler, who has been on death row since 2007, was convicted of capital murder in the 2004 shooting deaths of two men in Killeen.