The Next Man the State of Texas Plans to Execute Says He Never Killed Anyone

“People don’t expect these guys to have friends, family, people that care about them,” Jeff Hood said, talking about Steven Nelson, a Texas death row inmate scheduled for execution on Feb. 5. “They assume that we’re crazy as shit for wanting to have relationships with them.”

Hood is a priest in the Old Catholic Church, a spinoff of Roman Catholicism. He is serving as Nelson’s spiritual adviser, which means that if the execution goes forward he will stand beside Nelson in the room where Texas officials kill prisoners by lethal injection, comforting him in his last moments. Hood said he has done the same for eight men executed since 2022, watching as their bodies grew still and the color drained from their faces.

“It’s haunting,” he told the Chronicle. “I don’t want to have to see it again.”

Nelson was sentenced to death in 2012 for his role in the murder of pastor Clint Dobson of the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington. Nelson claims he served as a lookout while two accomplices robbed the church and killed Dobson, but he was convicted under Texas’ “law of parties,” which allows juries to hold anyone involved in a crime responsible for whatever happens during its commission. For 12 years, he has argued that the attorneys who represented him at trial didn’t adequately investigate the roles of his alleged accomplices, who were never prosecuted. He also says they didn’t present an accurate picture of his terrible upbringing, something that could have led his jury to give him a life sentence rather than death.

Nelson’s wife, Noa Dubois, described this upbringing to the Chronicle. Dubois said that Nelson’s parents beat and demeaned him daily. She said a roommate living with the family sexually abused him. Court records state that Nelson was diagnosed with depression at the age of 8 and later engaged in self-harm and suicidal actions. In his teens, he received diagnoses for dissociative behavior, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. And he became a chronic juvenile offender.

“He was born in survival mode,” Dubois said. “He purposely committed crimes and said, 'I did it,’ just so he could go to juvie, because it was safer than being at home.”

Dubois began exchanging letters with Nelson in 2020. Soon, she was visiting him on death row. She drove to Texas from her home in Los Angeles three months ago to work with Hood to try to stop Nelson’s execution. In November, the pair protested outside First Baptist Arlington, criticizing its members for supporting Nelson’s death sentence. Hood accuses the church of “spiritual malpractice.”

“What kind of a church pushes for someone to be executed?” Hood asked. “Who the hell would want to go to a church like that? You think about the story of Jesus, and these assholes are the ones out there screaming, 'Crucify him!’ If your pastor is killed, the gospel is very clear – Love your neighbor as you love yourself. It’s not too complicated.”

Dubois and Hood have worked to bring journalists’ attention to Nelson’s case – a powerful story appeared in Texas Monthly two weeks ago – but neither are under any illusion about their chances of stopping the execution.

“I’m just offering love to someone who never had it,” Dubois explained. “I just want to share understanding and compassion with someone. I wake up every day and I’m like, 'I need to do something. I need to fight for him.’

“And yet, it’s gonna end up hurting me,” she said after a pause. “But that’s another issue.”