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.

The pastor's young widow, Laura Dobson, sobbed on the stand during Steven Nelson's murder trial, saying: 'I didn't know this much evil existed in the world.'