A Texas man convicted of beating and suffocating a Dallas area pastor in his own church during a robbery was facing execution on Wednesday, the second scheduled execution in the United States so far this year.
Steven Lawayne Nelson was condemned for the 2011 killing of Rev. Clint Dobson, 28, who was beaten, strangled, and suffocated with a plastic bag inside NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington. Dobson’s secretary also was severely beaten and left for dead, but she survived.
Nelson, 37, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. Nelson would be the first Texas death row inmate executed since Robert Roberson’s Oct. 17, 2024, execution date was delayed in what would have been the first in the U.S. tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, and the first of four scheduled in Texas over the next three months….