The second scheduled execution in the United States this year was set for Wednesday, when a Texas man convicted of robbing a Dallas-area pastor in his own church then assaulting and strangling him was set to be put to death.
In 2011, Rev. Clint Dobson, 28, was killed by Steven Lawayne Nelson, who was found guilty of beating, strangling, and suffocating him with a trash bag inside NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington. Although she survived, Dobson’s assistant was also brutally assaulted and left for dead.
Nelson, 37, is expected to be executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville state prison on Wednesday night. Nelson would be the first death row inmate from Texas to be executed since Robert Roberson’s execution date was postponed because of a shaken infant syndrome diagnosis on October 17, 2024.
He would also be the first of four death row inmates slated to be executed in Texas during the following three months.
The country’s first execution of 2025 took place in South Carolina on Friday. When a friend’s charred body was discovered in a car’s trunk in 2001, Marion Bowman Jr. was found guilty of murder.
A laborer and high school dropout, Nelson had a lengthy criminal record and a series of arrests dating back to when he was six years old.
While on death row, Nelson recently got married and begged for forgiveness, saying he had only been a robbery lookout and that two other men were responsible for Dobson’s death.
According to Nelson’s testimony during the trial, he waited outside the church for roughly twenty-five minutes before entering and observing that Dobson and Judy Elliott had been assaulted. He also insisted that Dobson was still alive.
Nelson claimed to have taken Dobson’s laptop and to have received Elliott’s credit cards and car keys from one of the other males.
Later, Elliott’s husband, the church’s part-time music pastor, discovered the victims. She had been battered so badly that he didn’t recognize her right away.
Nelson’s fingerprints, fragments of his broken belt, blood from the victims on his sneakers, and surveillance footage of him using Elliott’s credit cards and driving her car were all used as evidence in the trial.
The two men Nelson accused of the attack had alibis, according to investigators: One man was 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, according to phone records, and the other man was in a chemistry class, according to phone records and a sign-in sheet.
Due to allegations of poor legal representation during Nelson’s trial and punishment, Nelson’s counsel filed an appeal, arguing that their attorneys failed to provide mitigating evidence of a difficult upbringing in Oklahoma and Texas or to contest the other men’s alibis.
On January 28, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a stay of execution, and state and federal courts have rejected his appeals.
This Monday, Nelson’s lawyers requested that the U.S. Supreme Court step in and postpone his execution so they have more time to contest his conviction.
Nelson was accused of killing another prisoner while he was awaiting trial. Following his guilty judgment and death sentence, he was never tried on that charge.
Nelson cut an electric shock cuff off his ankle during his trial. Later, in a holding cell, he damaged a water pipe, causing black, disgusting water to flood the courtroom. Using a key concealed in his genitalia, he also routinely unfastened his ankle shackles and handcuffs.
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Before the end of April, Texas has three more executions planned.
The first is set for February 13. After shooting a strip club manager and the manager’s companion over Thanksgiving weekend in 2004, Richard Lee Tabler was found guilty.
Additionally, Tabler admitted to killing two club dancers. Despite being charged with their murders, he was never put on trial.
