Texas inmate seeks death; court says no

LIVINGSTON, Texas — The first letter, neatly handwritten on lined paper, arrived at the federal courthouse in Dallas nearly a year and a half ago with a simple address: U.S. District Clerk's Office.

"I am a college graduate and have no delusions what will occur as an end result of these proceedings," death-row inmate Michael Rodriguez wrote in the first of a series of notes.

Rodriguez, one of the notorious Texas Seven, who escaped from state prison in 2000 and killed a police officer while on the lam, has dropped his appeals and wants to die.

He can't.

A federal judge signed off on Rodriguez's request Sept. 27, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to review the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case. But a state judge won't set an execution date for Rodriguez until after the high court rules on the Kentucky case.

Rodriguez told a psychologist who interviewed him before a competency hearing that he "had to accept his death sentence and submit to it as payment in order to be forgiven and obtain salvation."

Rodriguez and six other inmates overpowered workers at a southern Texas prison on Dec. 13, 2000. On Christmas Eve, while robbing a sporting-goods store in a Dallas suburb, they shot officer Aubrey Hawkins, 29, 11 times. Police caught up with the gang a month later in Colorado.

A jury convicted Rodriguez and sent him to death row in May 2002 for his role. Rodriguez admitted pulling the officer from his patrol car.

Rodriguez, who declined to be interviewed, was serving a life sentence for hiring a hit man to kill his wife.

Rodriguez's lawyer, Danny Burns, has urged his client to continue appeals.