A former Charles Manson follower linked to a string of gay hate crimes in the 1980s won an appeal and has been let off death row, but under a new plea deal will still spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Marlin Enos Nelson, a 50-year-old Harris County man who once professed a hatred of gay people, was originally sentenced to die for the 1987 murder of a telephone switchman who picked him up for sex, according to court records.

But in 2013, an appeals court decided that flawed jury instructions at his 1988 trial could have unfairly netted him a death sentence, so the judges overturned his punishment while leaving in place the guilty verdict.

In recent weeks, a Harris County criminal court judge approved a plea deal that includes a life sentence for the original slaying, plus 10 years, 20 years and a second life sentence for a trio of other decades-old crimes. The stacked sentences will keep him behind bars for life.

“We don’t want him to ever get out of prison,” said Dane Schiller, spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Nelson’s defense attorney did not respond to a request for comment, but Pat Hartwell — a death penalty abolitionist and one of Nelson’s supporters — said the outcome was long overdue.

“It is not a victory per se — a victory would have been to never put him on death row,” she said. “He came from an entirely screwed-up childhood. The man should have never been convicted in the first place.”

History of hate

Born in Mississippi in 1968, Nelson had just turned 20 when he was sentenced to death for the killing of James Randall Howard.

In the summer of 1987, the 35-year-old telephone switchman brought Nelson back to his apartment in Montrose, where Nelson stabbed him 15 times in the back and beat him in the head with a 10-pound bar. Then, he ransacked the apartment, taking off with jewelry and fleeing in the slain man’s new Honda.

During trial, prosecutors told the jury about Nelson’s youth prison record, including claims in his Texas Youth Commission files indicating he was a follower of cult leader Charles Manson. The state attorneys also detailed a slew of alleged crimes in Nelson’s past, including another murder, a stabbing and a few dozen assaults, mostly targeting gay people.

At one point, Nelson tried killing a 66-year-old gay man by lodging a steak knife in the back of his neck, records show

“When I hit him I thought about what happened to me when I was 11 years old and I was molested,” Nelson told police after the knifing. “I been hating queers ever since that happened.”

Aside from the childhood rape briefly referenced in trial, Nelson had a traumatic history of physical abuse, incarceration, neglect and drug use. The jurors, however, only heard some of the mitigating evidence that might have persuaded them to vote against a death sentence.

Though court records indicate Nelson admitted his guilt in Howard’s slaying, he never said he intended to rob the man — and it was that robbery that made the killing eligible for a death sentence.

Still, a Harris County jury found him guilty then sentenced him to die. For more than two decades afterward he continued fighting his conviction and sentence, claiming there wasn’t enough evidence against him, that state courts didn’t fully review his appeal and that his earlier attorneys hadn’t effectively represented him.

Then in 2013, a state appeals court overturned his sentence as one of many so-called “Penry cases” named for Johnny Paul Penry.

Penry — a former Texas death row inmate now serving multiple life sentences — was spared the ultimate punishment after his case twice went to the U.S. Supreme Court, netting a pair of decisions that touched on flawed jury instructions. During the punishment phase of a capital trial, the courts said, juries needed to be specifically instructed on the role of mitigating evidence.

“It’s not enough that a defendant be permitted to present evidence that could spare his life,” Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center told the Chronicle last year. “The jury has to know what it can do with that evidence.”

As with the other Penry cases, Nelson won consideration for new punishment. It’s not clear why it took six years to resolve Nelson’s case, even after the appeals court decision. Neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys on the case offered clarification.

Since life without parole wasn’t an option in Texas when Nelson was first sent to death row, prosecutors had to stack a variety of charges — including escape, cocaine possession and aggravated robbery — to ensure that he would he would stay behind bars forever and not have a shot at parole.

The most serious of those — aggravated robbery — stems from another 1987 killing, just days before Howard’s murder. That August, a 42-year-old man picked up Nelson at a bus stop on Aldine Bender. Nelson, then 19, bludgeoned him to death at his apartment with a crescent wrench and a hammer.

In this month’s plea deal, Nelson agreed to a life sentence for that crime. He agreed to 20 years for the drug charge and 10 for the escape, and he waived his right to appeal those sentences.

Other cases impacted

Under her tenure, District Attorney Kim Ogg has agreed to life sentences for a handful of other former death row prisoners.

In April 2017, Randolph Mansoor Greer was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences, also as a result of Penry issues. Three months later, Robert Campbell got a life sentence after courts decided he was too intellectually disabled to execute.

Next came Duane Buck, who was resentenced to life in prison after a U.S. Supreme Court decision reversed his punishment in light of allegations of racist expert testimony. Then Calvin Hunter was spared a death sentence over claims of false expert testimony, and last year Michael Wayne Norris was resentenced in another Penry case.

Even though Ogg ran as a reformer and has backed away from the use of capital punishment, she's still opted to pursue a death sentence in at least eight pending cases.

Her office has also asked for execution dates for four convicted killers, three of whom have already been executed. One, Dexter Darnell Johnson, is scheduled to die in August.