Steven Lawayne Nelson maintained that he unknowingly participated in the violent church robbery but didn’t harm anyone. His execution was the state’s first for 2025.

A Texas man convicted of beating and suffocating a Dallas area pastor in his church during a robbery was put to death Wednesday evening, the second execution in the U.S. this year and the first of four scheduled in Texas over the next three months.

Texas executed Steven Nelson by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 2011 murder of a beloved young pastor. Nelson, who was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. CT, was convicted of killing the Rev.

Texas is set to execute Steven Nelson by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 2011 murder of beloved pastor Clint Dobson, who was just beginning his ministerial career.

The execution Steven Nelson for the 2011 murder of Rev. Clint Dobson is tonight. His wife and a death penalty activist will be witnesses.

If his execution is carried out, it will be the first in Texas since Robert Roberson’s was stayed in October after an unprecedented legal maneuver by

Nelson, 37, was convicted of the 2011 murder of the Rev. Clint Dobson in a robbery that turned fatal inside Dobson's own church just west of Dallas.