‘How Innocent Do They Have to Be?’: Texas’ First Scheduled Execution of 2025 Raises Thorny Questions

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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.

Advocates for Nelson and opponents of the death penalty are trying to call attention to his case, knowing—as his spiritual adviser Reverend Jeff Hood puts it—that he is “not the poster-child” for innocence. Nelson’s scheduled execution comes months after Robert Roberson, a 58-year-old convicted based on shaky science, was temporarily saved from execution in October by unprecedented legislator intervention as questions of his innocence made headlines.

“Best case scenario, we’re talking about someone who stepped over [possibly] dying people to steal a laptop. … There’s no way of making that look pretty,” Hood told the Texas Observer. “But the question is not about the perpetrator. It’s about us. Are we righteous enough to kill someone? Are we righteous enough to judge someone in that way?”

Hood, a Catholic faith leader well known for his death penalty activism, reached out last year to Nelson to ask if he could be his spiritual adviser. “I knew that his case involved killing a pastor. And I also knew that this was going to be a circumstance where the church was going to advocate for him to be executed. And … to me, it’s like taking a big shit on the face of Jesus to advocate for someone to be killed.”

Nelson has long maintained he served only as the lookout on the morning of the robbery, entering the church office after the assault to steal some items, including Dobson’s laptop and some credit cards. He alleges his two accomplices committed the murder. Neither of the other men was ever brought to trial. One of the men, Anthony Springs, was found with some of the victims’ stolen items and initially arrested alongside Nelson in 2011, but a grand jury opted not to indict him.

During Nelson’s trial, the jury heard evidence that pointed to his involvement: his fingerprints at the scene, the victims’ blood on his shoes. After the murder, Nelson was seen driving Elliott’s car. He went on a shopping spree at the mall with the victims’ stolen credit cards. What the jury didn’t hear was much about the two men Nelson alleged actually committed the murder, according to court filings.

In a subsequent application for a writ of habeas corpus filed January 15 of this year, Nelson’s lawyers argued his original attorneys didn’t explore “substantial evidence of Nelson’s minimal involvement and lessened culpability.”

According to the filing, people close to Springs implicated him in the murder, and when police arrested him, his arms and hands were extensively bruised. Nelson, his lawyers say, had no such injuries when he was arrested. But Nelson’s trial defense lawyers didn’t interview Springs or run down these leads ahead of his trial.

The new filing also argues that an expert witness at the trial was biased against Nelson because he’s Black. In her testimony, neuropsychologist Dr. Antoinette McGarrahan testified that Nelson’s risk factors for future violence included his “minority status.” The state has not yet responded to this filing.

This is the latest in a years-long appeals process following Nelson’s conviction. In 2015, the Court of Criminal Appeals—the highest criminal court in Texas—upheld his conviction and death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined multiple times to hear the case.

In the CCA’s 2015 opinion, then-Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote that Nelson was responsible for Dobson’s murder and that he has “a long history of bad behavior, both inside and outside a confinement setting.”

While awaiting trial in the Tarrant County Jail in 2011 and 2012, Nelson developed a reputation. He reportedly got into fights with guards and other prisoners. At one point, according to court documents, he broke the sprinkler system in the day room and played in the spray. He was initially charged for the death of another prisoner at the Tarrant County Jail named Jonathan Holden, but the state ultimately dropped the case.

An article ran in the Dallas Observer that October, following his conviction. It began, “Tarrant County jailers are breathing a collective sigh of relief: Ladies and gentlemen, Steven Lawayne Nelson has left the building.”

Nelson’s new wife, Noa Dubois, said she doesn’t recognize the man described in those reports.

Dubois met Nelson in 2020 via a prison pen pal site. Raised in France, she had moved to Montreal and was looking for a friend who could relate to her troubled upbringing. “We connected on a lot of different things that we went through, on different scales of course, and on completely opposite sides of the world,” Dubois told the Observer.

Nelson was born in Oklahoma, where he had his first run-in with the law at six years old. He racked up a notably long juvenile record for property crimes, and when he was transferred by Oklahoma authorities to live with his mother in Texas, things escalated. At 13 years old, he was arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was referred multiple times to the Tarrant County juvenile services department after being picked up for various felonies. When he was 14 years old, he was committed to the Texas Youth Commission, where he spent more than three years incarcerated, gaining parole shortly before aging out of the juvenile system.

Dubois and Nelson’s early relationship developed through the prison’s mail room. She said he was initially more guarded, unsure of her intentions, but he eventually opened up. Early on, she remembers that he didn’t respond to one of her letters for three months because he had lost his privileges at the prison. She told him he needed to shape up and behave because someone was out there waiting for his replies.

Dubois temporarily moved to Texas this year to be with Nelson as his date approaches. In November, she hosted a rally with other supporters and anti-death penalty advocates outside of First Baptist Arlington. There, she and Jeff Hood spoke, acknowledging the violent crime while pleading with attendees to care about his execution. And they continue to plead, as the date looms.

“Do we only care if someone is innocent?” Hood asked the Observer. “And how innocent do they have to be?”

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