National support for the death penalty is at an all-time low, with younger adults from both major political parties spurning capital punishment. But in Texas’ execution chamber, the pace of lethal injections has not let up, even as some condemned Texans—including Melissa Lucio and Robert Roberson—have had their high-profile executions halted with only days or hours to spare.
Recent outcry against the state’s death penalty has come from both sides of the aisle. On the day of Roberson’s scheduled execution last year, a bipartisan group of legislators made the unprecedented move to subpoena him for a public hearing—scheduled after he was supposed to die—in a successful effort to forestall the killing so the courts could consider his innocence. (On October 9 this year, Roberson’s execution was stayed by the state’s top criminal court a week before he would have died.)
Nan Tolson, who previously worked as chief spokesperson for Governor Greg Abbott, leads the Texas chapter of the national network Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. She sees the punishment as rife with problems: from a political angle or a faith perspective, and as a public safety tool. Since founding the Lone Star State’s affiliate in 2023 as part of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, she said the organization has engaged with thousands of Republicans across the state—creating what she calls a “safe space for conservatives to talk to like-minded people about the death penalty”—bringing hundreds into the fight against capital punishment. Tolson, 30, was selected for a “40 Under 40” fellowship in 2024 by the Texas Federation of Republican Women for her activism.
