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Member Of 'Texas 7' Is Set For Execution

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The Associated Press

Published: August 11, 2008

LIVINGSTON, Texas - Michael Rodriguez remembers the exhilaration of newfound freedom when he hid in the back of a stolen truck as he and six of his buddy convicts staged one of Texas' most notorious prison breaks.

Then he recalls seeing his photo on national TV and grasping the reality that their Hollywood-style plan to rob a Nevada casino had gone terribly awry.

He and his fellow fugitives were being hunted everywhere as the killers of a police officer, Aubrey Hawkins, at a store they robbed outside Dallas.

This week, Rodriguez, 45, is set to become the first of the six surviving members of the infamous "Texas 7" - all of them now on death row - to go to the death chamber. His execution is set for Thursday.

"I'm glad we got caught, so no one else would get hurt," Rodriguez said, discussing with a reporter for the first time his involvement in the December 2000 crime spree.

Rodriguez and six other inmates overpowered workers at the state prison system's Connally Unit near Kenedy in South Texas on Dec. 13, 2000, took the workers' clothes, grabbed guns from the prison armory and fled in a prison truck.

After some six weeks of evading an intense manhunt, the fugitives were captured in Colorado. One of the seven killed himself as authorities closed in.

Rodriguez, who first went to prison with a life sentence for arranging the 1992 slaying of his wife in San Antonio, worked for more than a year to convince the courts he was competent to drop his appeals and volunteer for execution.

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