A Texas man condemned for beating and quelling a shepherd in the Dallas area in his own church during a robbery faced the execution on Wednesday, the second execution scheduled in the United States so far this year.
Steven Lawane Nelson was convicted of the 2011 murder of Reverend Clint Dobson, 28, who was beaten, strangled and suffocated with a plastic bag inside the Northpointe Bautista Church in Arlington. Dobson’s secretary was also severely beaten and left for dead, but survived.
Nelson, 37, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Wednesday night in the state penitentiary in Huntsville. Nelson would be Texas Death Row’s first inmate executed since October 17 by Robert Roberson, 2024, The execution date was delayed in what would have been the first in the United States linked to a diagnosis of Shakey baby syndromeand the first of the four scheduled in Texas for the next three months.
South Carolina carried out the nation First execution of 2025 on Friday. Marion Bowman Jr. was declared guilty of murder for the death of a friend whose burned body was found in the trunk of a car in 2001.
Nelson was an uncomfortable of workers and secondary with a long history of legal problems and arrests that began until 6 years. Nelson. Recently married while I was in the death corridor And Mercy has asked, claiming that he had only served as a robbery surveillance and blamed two other men for killing Dobson.
Nelson testified at the trial and has argued that he waited outside the Church for about 25 minutes before entering and seeing that Dobson and Judy Elliott had been beaten, and insisted that Dobson was still alive. Nelson said he took Dobson’s laptop and that one of the other men gave Elliott’s keys and credit cards.
Later, the victims were found by Elliott’s husband, the part -time minister of partner of the Church, who did not recognize it immediately because he had been so severely beaten.
The evidence of the trial showed the digital footprints and pieces of Nelson of his broken belt on the crime scene, drops of blood of the victims in their sneakers and a surveillance video that show it driving Elliott’s car and using their cards Credit. The researchers also said that the two men who Nelson blamed for the attack had alibi: the telephone records placed one of them at 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, and telephone records and a login sheet placed the other man in A chemistry class.
Nelson’s lawyers appealed on claims of bad legal representation in their judgment and sentence, saying that these lawyers did little to challenge the co -stood of the other men, or present a mitigating evidence of a problematic childhood in Oklahoma and Texas. Their appeals have been denied by the state and federal courts, and the Texas Criminal Appeals Court denied a suspension of the execution on January 28. Nelson’s lawyers asked the United States Supreme Court this week to intervene and stop their execution, to give them more time to challenge their conviction.
While waiting for the trial, Nelson was accused in the murder of another inmate in the jail. He was never tried by that position after his verdict of guilt and death sentence. During his judgmentNelson broke an electronic sleeve on his ankle, and then broke a water pipe in a cell, flooding the court room with Agua Negras. He also regularly discouraged his wives and ankle restrictions when using a key that was hiding in his genitals.
Texas has three more scheduled executions before the end of April.
The first is scheduled for February 13. Richard Lee Taber was convicted of shooting a manager of Striptease Clubs and the manager’s friend on the weekend of Thanksgiving in 2004. Tabler also acknowledged killing two dancers from the club. He was accused of his murders but was never judged.
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