A Texas man convicted of killing a pastor during a robbery in 2011 was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday evening.
Steven Lawayne Nelson was put to death at the Huntsville state penitentiary for the murder of Rev. Clint Dobson. The 28-year-old pastor was beaten, strangled, and suffocated with a plastic bag inside NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington. His secretary was also attacked but survived.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Nelson’s final appeal just three hours before his scheduled execution. He was the first Texas inmate executed in 2025 and the first in the state since October 2024. Texas has three more executions scheduled in the next three months.
Nelson had a long history of legal troubles, with arrests beginning at just six years old. While in prison, he got married and pleaded for mercy, claiming he was only a lookout for the robbery and blaming two other men for the pastor’s murder. However, investigators found strong evidence against him, including his fingerprints, a broken belt at the crime scene, blood on his shoes, and surveillance footage of him driving the victim’s car and using her credit cards. The two men he blamed were proven innocent through phone records and other evidence.
During the trial, Nelson testified that he waited outside the church for 25 minutes before entering and seeing the victims injured. He claimed that Dobson was still alive when he arrived and admitted to taking the pastor’s laptop while another man gave him the secretary’s car keys and credit cards.
The pastor’s body was discovered by his secretary’s husband, who initially did not recognize her due to the severity of her injuries.
Nelson’s lawyers argued that he had poor legal representation during the trial. They claimed his defense did not properly challenge the alibis of the other two men or present evidence about his troubled childhood in Oklahoma and Texas. However, all previous appeals were denied, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to stop the execution on January 28.
While awaiting trial, Nelson was also accused of murdering another inmate in jail, though he was never tried for that crime. He caused disturbances in court, breaking a shock cuff on his ankle, damaging a water pipe that flooded the courtroom, and using a hidden key to unlock his handcuffs and ankle restraints.
Nelson was executed as planned, bringing an end to his long history of violent crimes.
