Five states, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas, have carried out five executions so far this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Twenty executions are scheduled for the remainder of the year.
Texas killed two people, both in February, with three more executions scheduled through May. On February 5, 37-year-old Steven Nelson was executed by lethal injection, the Texas Tribune reported. Nelson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of 28-year-old Clinton Dobson, a Baptist minister, and the assault of Judy Elliott, a church employee. Nelson always maintained his innocence. “No jury or court ever considered significant evidence that he did not kill pastor Clinton Dobson and played a lesser role in the offense as a lookout for two other men as they robbed NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington in 2011,” the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty stated on its website.
Texas also killed 46-year-old Richard Tabler on February 13. Tabler was convicted of killing Mohamed-Amine Rahmouni and Haitham Zayed in 2004. Tabler confessed to the murders, according to the Texas Tribune, which also reported that he apologized to the families of the victims who witnessed his execution. “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret my actions,” Tabler said before being killed, the Tribune reported.
In South Carolina, 44-year-old Marion Bowman was killed on January 3, the third execution in the state since September, when South Carolina resumed state killing after a 13-year pause caused by an inability to obtain lethal injection drugs. State officials were able to access the drugs after a 2023 law was passed shielding the identities of the drugs’ suppliers. The South Carolina Daily Gazette reported that Bowman always maintained his innocence in the 2001 murder of Kandee Martin, with whom he had been having an affair.
In Alabama, 52-year-old Demetrius Frazier was killed by nitrogen gas, the fourth person to be executed by that method in the state, AL.com reported. The paper noted Frazier “exhibited sporadic gasping and shallow breathing” for almost eight minutes after the gas was administered, and corrections officials didn’t declare him dead until about 25 minutes later.
