Steven Nelson didn’t deserve to die, even if he did kill a pastor

Rev Dr Jeff Hood met Steven Nelson, convicted for the murder of a church pastor, on death row in Texas. Steven protested his innocence until the end, but whatever the truth of his case, he should not have been executed, says Hood. We are not righteous enough to judge someone else in that way

Softly, I met Steven Nelson. There were no lights. There were no reporters. There were no cameras. There was only us. Immediately, it was clear that he was much quieter than the headlines I’d read about him. Of course, I’d encountered misleading headlines before. It’s just that the discrepancy was so stark. Headlines don’t often lead to deeper truths. Most of the time, when you trust them, they lead you far from both the human and divine. If you want to know the truth, you must always go deeper. Immediately, it was clear that Steven had been hardened by a lifetime of broken promises and dreams. That’s where I found him, but that’s not where we stayed. In time, we grew to love each other very much. 

But in the background, there were always the headlines. 

In a highly publicised trial, Steven was convicted of the brutal murder of Rev Clint Dobson (suffocated to death with a plastic bag) and the assault of church secretary, Judy Elliott (beaten mercilessly) at NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas during an attempted robbery. In addition, Steven committed a variety of infractions while imprisoned at the Tarrant County Jail, and was also a suspect in the murder of a fellow inmate, Jonathan Holden. Details such as these are more likely to elicit horror than compassion.