Michael Rodriguez, Member of "Texas 7," Scheduled for Execution

Michael Rodriguez, one member of a group of men who escaped from a Texas prison in 2000 known as the "Texas 7" is scheduled for execution on August 14th.

On Christmas eve in December of 2000, Irving police officers responded to a call involving one of their own, Officer Aubrey Hawkins, shot 11 times and killed.

Earlier in the month, on December 13, 2000, seven inmates carried out a plan to overpower corrections workers at the John B. Connally Unit and escaped from the maximum security prison. Rodriguez and the six other inmates took the workers clothes, then grabbed 16 guns from the prison armory and fled the prison in a stolen truck. Eleven days later Officer Hawkins was shot after responding to a call where the escapees were robbing an Irving Oshman's Sporting Goods Store.

Prior to the escape Michael Rodriguez was serving a life sentence for hiring a hit man to kill his wife, Theresa, so he could collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in life insurance money. Michael Rodriguez' brother, Mark, was also convicted for his role in the murder-for-hire plot.

Michael Rodriguez will be the first of the escapees to be executed. Larry James Harper, one of the escapees who had been serving a life sentence for a multiple rapes, committed suicide in Colorado before being captured.

Randy Halprin, George Rivas, Donald Newbury, Patrick Murphy Jr., and Joseph Garcia, the other members of the "Texas 7" all sit on death row awaiting their date with the executioner.

According to the schedule posted on the Death Penalty Resource website, there are 7 executions scheduled nationwide in the month of August, with 6 of those being in the nations busiest death penalty state, Texas. The first inmate scheduled to die this month, Jose Ernesto Medellin, was executed Tuesday night amid international protests. Next up is Heliberto Chi on Thursday August 7th.