A man who suffocated a pastor to death inside his own church made a defiant remark before he was executed by lethal injection as his wife held up their white service dog to witness the event.
Steven Lawayne Nelson, 37, said ‘lets ride, Warden’ before he was pronounced dead at 6.50pm CST in Huntsville, Texas on Wednesday night – after refusing to walk into the chamber in what has been described as a ‘non violent protest.’
His death marked the second execution in the United States for 2025.
Nelson beat, strangled and suffocated Reverand Clint Dobson inside the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington in 2011. Dobson’s secretary Judy Elliott was also horrifically beaten but survived her injuries.
Despite reports of his protestation at entering the chamber, he appeared at peace with his fate in his very last moments, repeatedly telling his new wife that he loved her and was grateful for her as she watched on through the window.
His wife, Helene Noa Dubois, held up to the window a white dog that she was allowed to bring into the witness area as Nelson said: ‘Give Monkey a hug for me.’
‘I’m not scared, it’s cold s**t in here. But I’m at peace, I’m ready to be at home,’ Nelson said. ‘Let’s ride, Warden.’
He had asked for his spiritual advisor and death penalty opponent, Jeff Hood, to be in the execution chamber with him ‘to pray over me and give me last rites.’ Hood told USAToday that Nelson ‘fought to the end.’
‘It took them forever to declare that he had passed,’ Hood said after the execution. ‘He fought to the very end.’
According to AP, as the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital was administered, he told Dubois, ‘Let me go to sleep.’ The drug appeared to take effect as he said the word ‘love,’ gasped twice and appeared to try to hold his breath.
His head, shoulders and arms trembled for a few seconds before all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 24 minutes later.
He was not entitled to a final ‘death row’ meal under a unique Texas law which abolished the luxury in 2011.
Nelson has always maintained his innocence, alleging he acted as a lookout and robbed the 28-year-old pastor while casting blame for his death on two accomplices.
Several last-ditch bids to avoid the death penalty – the latest of which occurred just several hours ago – had failed.
Death row inmates across the United States where the death penalty is utilized are often famously entitled to a ‘last meal’ in which they can generally request comfort foods.
But Texas no longer offers it after Lawrence Russell Brewer placed an order for a triple meat bacon cheeseburger, meat lovers pizza, three fajitas, a pound of barbecuq, two chicken fried steaks, a pint of ice cream and a peanut butter fudge slab with crushed peanuts ahead of his execution, only to refuse to touch any of it when it arrived.
The stunt sparked uproar among lawmakers and the ‘death row meal’ was barred from then on. Now, inmates facing execution are offered the same food as any other prisoner.
Nelson is the first of four Texas inmates scheduled to face execution in the next three months.
Nelson was a laborer and high school dropout with a long history of legal trouble and arrests that started as early as age six.
He recently married while on death row. His new wife, Dubois,connected with Nelson via an inmate letter-writing program in 2020.
‘We started first as friends and as the years progressed the love and the feelings progressed more and we got married on December 4,’ he said.
Nelson said he is afraid to leave his wife alone and he had left the choice up to her if she wanted to attend and witness his death.
The prisoner added that this would be his first human contact in 13 years.
Nelson said he has spent the past dozen years in an 8-by-10-foot cell for 22 to 24 hours a day. As his execution date approaches, he is now under constant video surveillance.
The now 37-year-old testified at his trial and has maintained that he waited outside the church for about 25 minutes before going in and seeing that Dobson and Judy Elliott had been beaten. He insisted Dobson was still alive when he left.
Trial evidence showed Nelson’s fingerprints and pieces of his broken belt at the crime scene, drops of the victims’ blood on his sneakers, and surveillance video showing him driving Elliott’s car and using her credit cards.
Investigators also said the two men Nelson blamed for the attack had alibis: Phone records placed one of them 30 miles away, and phone records and a sign-in sheet placed the other man in a chemistry class.
Nelson’s attorneys appealed on claims of bad legal representation at his trial and sentencing, saying this lawyers did little to challenge the alibis of the other men, or present mitigating evidence of a troubled childhood in Oklahoma and Texas.
His previous appeals have been denied by state and federal courts, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a stay of execution on Jan. 28.
While awaiting trial, Nelson was indicted in the killing of another jail inmate. He was never tried on that charge after his guilty verdict and death sentence.
During his trial, Nelson broke an electronic shock cuff off his ankle, and later broke a water pipe in a holding cell, flooding the courtroom with foul black water.
He also regularly unshackled his handcuffs and ankle restraints by using a key he was hiding near his genitals.
Three more executions are scheduled in Texas before the end of April.
The first is set for February 13. Richard Lee Tabler was condemned for gunning down a strip club manager and the manager’s friend on Thanksgiving weekend in 2004.
Tabler also acknowledged killing two dancers from the club. He was charged with their killings but never tried in their deaths.