Steven Nelson has spent more than a dozen years on Death Row in Texas and is to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday for the murder of a pastor that he insists he did not commit.
You just don't want to do nothing. Nelson, who was wearing a white prison jumpsuit, spoke to AFP from a cubicle behind a glass partition and arrived for the interview in handcuffs, which were removed by prison guards and put back on when he departed. Nelson was convicted of the murder of Clint Dobson, a year-old pastor, during a robbery of the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, near Dallas.
Dobson was beaten and suffocated. Judy Elliott, the church secretary, was also badly beaten but survived. Nelson's appeals against his conviction and death sentence have been repeatedly rejected by Texas courts and the US Supreme Court has declined to hear his case. Nelson acknowledges that he served as a lookout during the robbery and that he entered the church after the murder to steal some items. But he says it was his two accomplices, who were never brought to trial, who were the ones who committed the murder.
Nelson married a French woman, Helene Noa Dubois, while in prison who he said has had a "major impact" on his life. Nelson said he is afraid to leave his wife alone and it is up to her to decide whether she wants to witness his execution.
That would override the good memories we've had over the years, to always close her eyes and see that," he said. Nelson has asked for his spiritual advisor, Jeff Hood, a death penalty opponent, to be in the execution chamber with him "to pray over me and give me last rites. Nelson said he has spent the past dozen years in an 8-byfoot 2. As his execution date approaches, he is now under constant video surveillance. Death Row inmates protest executions at the prison by refusing to speak on a day that someone is being put to death.
