Some 13 years after he was sentenced to death for the grisly murder of Texas Rev. Clint Dobson inside his church in 2011, Steven Nelson maintains his innocence and said the late pastor’s church rejected his efforts to contact Dobson’s family days before he is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday.
“My foundation might have been cracked 13 years ago but my foundation is whole now. I’m not the monster they say that I am,” Nelson said in an interview with NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield.
Nelson was convicted of suffocating Dobson in March 2011 when the pastor was just 28, according to The Associated Press. He also reportedly beat Dobson’s 69-year-old secretary, Judy Elliot, so badly that she suffered memory problems and a broken jaw. Prosecutors painted him as a “predator” who forced Dobson and Elliott to tie each other up before they were suffocated and battered.
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Even though blood from both victims was found on Nelson’s shoes and studs from his belt were discovered at the crime scene, Nelson blamed two friends for the crime and claimed he was just a lookout.
“During that trial, they only did surface stuff. They didn’t investigate my other two co-defendants. They didn’t investigate anything,” Nelson claimed.
“Right before trial, I asked the DA, can I take a lie detector test? He told me ‘no.’ He said I was a[n] easy conviction. I want to say that all the evidence, the new evidence that my trial lawyers didn’t present, it shows that I did not kill anybody. It also shows that the judicial system is made for you to lose at all costs, no matter what,” he said.
According to AP, investigators say that the two other men had alibis, with one having phone records placing him over 30 miles away from where the incident occurred. A sign-in sheet showed the other man in a chemistry class at the time. Nelson appealed his conviction, claiming his lawyers didn’t do enough to challenge the alibis of the two other men. His appeals and request for a stay of execution were denied. This week, attorneys requested the U.S. Supreme Court intervene in Nelson’s case.
Evidence against Nelson included a surveillance video showing him driving Elliott’s car and using her credit cards.
When asked during his interview with NewsNation what he would say to the church secretary who survived, Nelson said he would apologize.
“I would apologize for the role that I played even though I was not the person who assaulted her. It still hurts to this day that I couldn’t do nothing at the time. I keep thinking, what if that was one of my family members,” he noted.
He said he has been seeking to make amends with Dobson’s family, but the church has blocked his outreaches.
“I wrote a letter to them, but the church did not [accept] the letter. That really hurt me, you know, because you are an organization of Christ and there’s always redemption and a second chance,” he argued. “People do deserve second chances. I’m not a lost cause. I’m not beyond help. I’m not broken.”
Even though he has been accused of another murder while locked up, Nelson believes he deserves a second chance.
During Nelson’s 2012 trial, Dobson’s widow, Laura Dobson, joined Elliott and other friends and family in the courtroom to share impact statements after the verdict was reached.
“No one wants to remember you,” she told Nelson. “But they will always remember Clint. … I vow to be his voice and carry on his legacy, that good will always trump evil.”
Clint Dobson’s parents, Rod and Sharon Dobson, also told Nelson how he robbed the world of a good man.
“He was generous of heart, constant of faith and joyful of spirit,” Sharon Dobson said, reading the epitaph now on her son’s grave. “I wish you could have known him.”
Dennis R. Wiles, pastor of First Baptist Arlington, the parent church of the now-shuttered Northpointe Baptist Church, did not immediately respond to calls from The Christian Post for comment Wednesday. In a statement after Nelson’s death sentence in 2012, he voiced respectful support for the court’s decision.
“We have asked God for the truth to be known and for justice to be served. As the Bible teaches us, God has placed the civil authority in our midst so that innocent people can live in freedom without fear and so that guilty offenders can be appropriately punished,” Wiles wrote.
“This trial has been conducted with an incredible level of professionalism and integrity. A jury comprised of members from our community has reached a verdict based on evidence presented in a court of law. We now can confidently say that justice has been served, and we will support the decision of this court.”
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