An official date has been set for the execution of the man convicted of murdering Rev. Clint Dobson in 2011.
Steven Lawayne Nelson, 37, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on February 2, 2025, in Huntsville, reported The Dallas Morning News.
Nelson’s crime dates back to March 3, 2011, when he stormed the NorthPointe Baptist Church, assaulting Dobson and Judy Elliott, the church secretary.
He smothered Dobson with a plastic bag during a robbery gone awry. Elliott was also severely beaten and injured. Nelson was convicted of capital murder in October 2012 and sentenced to death just over a week later.
“The setting of an execution date is disappointing but expected,” Lee Kovarsky, one of Nelson’s attorneys, told DMN.
Kovarsky said he plans to file motions to challenge various purported legal issues in the case.
“There are still important issues that courts haven’t heard because prior counsel, now suspended from legal practice for neglecting clients, never raised them,” Kovarsky claimed, per DMN. “We will be raising those claims, which involve the improper consideration of race and Nelson’s secondary role in the crime, in filings to come.”
In the aftermath of Dobson’s murder, Nelson was accused of killing another inmate while in custody. However, the capital murder charge related to that incident was later dropped.
The announcement of Nelson’s execution date came less than 24 hours after Ramiro Gonzales, 41, received a lethal injection at 6:50 p.m. on Wednesday at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. Gonzales was convicted of the 2001 murder of Bridget Townsend in Bandera County.
Texas has one more execution scheduled this year. Ruben Gutierrez is set to be put to death on July 16, 2024. In September 1998, Gutierrez and two accomplices entered the home office of an 85-year-old woman to rob her safe of approximately $56,000. The victim was fatally struck and stabbed in the head during the incident. Gutierrez and his co-defendants fled the scene afterward, according to court documents.
In Dallas, there have been 102 murders committed this year as of June 27, according to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard.
The Dallas Police Department has been stretched thin, operating with only about 3,000 officers — 1,000 or so fewer than the 4,000 recommended in a City report. Additionally, the department has a much smaller budget than other high-crime jurisdictions, with just $654 million allocated to DPD this fiscal year.