By Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune, Feb. 5, 2025
Barring a highest-minute defend, Steven Lawayne Nelson is space to be completed Wednesday evening for killing an Arlington pastor, against the law he has maintained he did no longer commit, although he admitted he became as soon as there for a robbery while the raze occurred. The execution might perhaps perhaps perhaps well be Texas’ first in 2025.
On March 3, 2011, the then 24-365 days-mature Nelson entered NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington to commit a robbery. Within the technique, officers acknowledged he suffocated 28-365 days-mature Pastor Clint Dobson to death and assaulted 69-365 days-mature Judy Elliott, who became as soon as so badly overwhelmed her husband first and significant did no longer glance her when he arrived on the church.
Nelson became as soon as arrested two days later when he became as soon as realized riding Elliott’s car, which contained several objects belonging to her and Dobson. A slight of over a 365 days later, he became as soon as convicted of killing Dobson and sentenced to death.
Despite his conviction, Nelson has maintained his innocence by ethical appeals and interviews. The now 37-365 days-mature testified at trial, in opposition to his ethical illustration’s needs, that while he became as soon as complicit in the robbery, he became as soon as valid a lookout and didn’t enter the church unless after an confederate had killed Dobson. Even handed one of the 2 men Nelson claimed became as soon as an confederate became as soon as charged but no longer indicted by a colossal jury, and the opposite became as soon as no longer charged.
Nelson’s execution, which moreover might perhaps perhaps perhaps well be the principle in the United States in 2025, comes at a time by which death sentences and executions in Texas get reached file lows. The rising infrequency of executions, doubts on whether Nelson with out a doubt killed Dobson and the involvement of Dobson’s church get sparked conversations on the upright and non secular implications of capital punishment.
After Nelson became as soon as convicted and sentenced to death in 2012, officers with First Baptist Arlington, NorthPointe’s guardian church, launched a statement apparently approving his death sentence.
“We get asked God for the reality to be identified and for justice to be served,” the statement acknowledged. “We now can confidently remark that justice has been served and we are able to abet the likelihood of this court docket.”
The Rev. Jeff Hood, a non secular adviser to Nelson and several other other inmates who had been completed all around the nation and an recommend for abolishing the death penalty, acknowledged Nelson’s case stands out, especially resulting from the statement from church officers.
“It is a long way disgusting for a church to equate the admire of God, the admire of Jesus, with the admire of executions, the admire of killing,” Hood acknowledged.
Hood has been assembly with Nelson for months in preparation for the execution and to turn out to be “his most effective buddy” earlier than the mutter kills him. Even Nelson’s version of occasions — that he stepped over overwhelmed and bloodied victims to steal their valuables — deem a excessive crime that requires excessive punishment, Hood acknowledged. But the reverend argued execution in the end has slight to enact with Nelson’s culpability and more about the mutter.
“This is no longer a Robbie Roberson or Will Speer more or less feel-ethical form myth. It’s no longer that. What Steven did is mistaken, I point out vastly mistaken,” Hood acknowledged. “[But] I judge I’ll perhaps perhaps perhaps well argue it’s more about us and less about him.”
On the time, Tarrant County prosecutors charged Nelson on my own with raze, pointing to blood spatter on Nelson’s shoes, pieces of Nelson’s belt on the scene and his possession of stolen objects from the church. One day of the sentencing listening to, prosecutors moreover known as a Tarrant County jail inmate to testify that Nelson had killed a cellmate all over his incarceration main up to the trial, but no charges were introduced in opposition to Nelson in the inmate’s death.
Moreover to the shortage of charges introduced in opposition to Nelson’s alleged accomplices, the disclose’s instructions to the jury to rely on the legislation of occasions, which states that a particular person might perhaps perhaps perhaps well moreover be criminally accountable for the actions of 1 other particular person, moreover proved contentious for these disapproving of Nelson’s conviction. The instruction allowed the jury to convict Nelson in step with one of two determinations: that Nelson became as soon as straight accountable for Dobson’s death, or that he became as soon as social gathering to a robbery he will must get anticipated would consequence in death. The jury did no longer specify which of the 2 it conventional to reach the responsible verdict, in step with court docket paperwork.
Nelson filed quite loads of appeals in his 13 years on death row, claiming his trial did no longer adequately stumble on the involvement of the opposite two men, which he argued would get altered the verdict.
All of Nelson’s appeals get failed, essentially the most modern of which became as soon as for a defend of execution that became as soon as denied by the Texas Courtroom of Prison Appeals valid every week earlier than his scheduled execution. Nelson’s ethical group has appealed the likelihood to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, claiming the criminal appeals court docket did no longer specify whether its denial became as soon as in step with federal or mutter precedent.
Nelson, born in Oklahoma, suffered physical and sexual abuse in some unspecified time in the future of his childhood, which his defense group all over his sentencing listening to claimed affected his criminal file sooner than the Dobson raze. In conversations with Nelson, Hood acknowledged he recognizes how that abuse carried over by his existence.
“I enact judge it’s crucial to keep up a correspondence to the true fact that this is somebody who had a horrendous childhood,” Hood acknowledged. “I judge that it’s crucial to with out a doubt keep up a correspondence to the true fact that this is somebody that society gave up on, and I judge when the crime happens later, I judge we now get reaped what we sow.”
Nelson might perhaps perhaps perhaps well be the principle inmate completed in the U.S. for the reason that Department of Justice launched a file casting doubt on lethal injection being a painless way of capital punishment. In January, fashioned Legal skilled Overall Merrick Garland rescinded federal say of single-drug lethal injection — the identical protocol Texas has conventional since 2014 — for its executions, citing proof that it introduced on pulmonary edema. The DOJ file likened the results of the pulmonary edema to waterboarding.
Whereas the Texas Code of Prison Project exempts these completed from autopsies, several autopsies performed on inmates completed by lethal injection in other states printed increased lung weight attributable to fluid.
Texas’ second execution of the 365 days is scheduled on Feb. 15. Richard Tabler, who has been on death row since 2007, became as soon as convicted of capital raze in the 2004 capturing deaths of two men in Killeen.
Editor’s repeat: This text first and significant regarded in The Texas Tribune.
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