The crime that landed Steven Nelson on Texas’ death row took place 14 years ago in a North Texas church. Now, as his February 5 execution date looms, supporters—including his wife and a well-known priest—have rallied in front another church and appealed for mercy ahead of the state’s first scheduled execution of the year.
Nelson, 37, was convicted of capital murder after the 2011 robbery and killing of 28-year-old pastor Clinton Dobson, who led the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington. Nelson testified in court that on the morning of March 3, he and two other men decided to break into the church to rob the people inside. He said that while he kept watch outside, the other men assaulted the pastor, along with the church secretary, Judy Elliott, who was in her 60s. In the course of the robbery, court records show, the pastor was suffocated with a plastic bag, killing him. Elliott survived the attack.
Nelson, then 25, was convicted of capital murder by a Tarrant County jury in 2012. The jury was given special instructions: They could convict him of capital murder if they believed he committed the murder, or if they believed he had participated in the robbery that led to the pastor’s death and should have known that lethal violence was possible. The jury didn’t specify which theory it believed. In subsequent appeals, Nelson’s lawyers have attested he was convicted as a party to the murder, while the state’s filings assert Nelson committed the murder himself.
