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.

Nelson, 37, was convicted of the 2011 murder of the Rev. Clint Dobson in a robbery that turned fatal inside Dobson's own church just west of Dallas.

Nelson, 37, was put to death by lethal injection for smothering Clint Dobson, a 28-year-old pastor and husband, during a botched robbery at