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.