HUNTSVILLE, Texas – One of the infamous "Texas Seven" convicts who escaped from a state prison more than seven years ago and killed a Dallas-area police officer now has an execution date.

Michael Rodriguez has been set for lethal injection Aug. 14, Kim Schaefer, a Dallas County assistant district attorney who handles capital cases, said Wednesday.

Mr. Rodriguez, 45, ordered his appeals dropped and had been asking the courts for nearly two years to give him a death date.

A federal judge signed off on his request Sept. 27, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a Kentucky challenge to lethal injection as a means of capital punishment. That case stalled executions around the nation. But in a decision last month, the high court ruled lethal injection was not unconstitutionally cruel, clearing the way for capital punishment to resume.

Mr. Rodriguez and six other inmates overpowered workers at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Connally Unit in South Texas on Dec. 13, 2000, took their clothes, then grabbed 16 guns from the prison armory and fled in a stolen truck.

On Christmas Eve, while robbing a suburban Dallas sporting goods store, they shot Irving police Officer Aubrey Hawkins 11 times. They were caught in Colorado.

Mr. Rodriguez's capital murder trial was moved to Franklin County, 100 miles northeast of Dallas, because of publicity. He was sent to death row in May 2002.

Five of Mr. Rodriguez's companions also were given death sentences. The seventh fugitive killed himself before he could be recaptured. Mr. Rodriguez would be the first of the group to be executed.

The Associated Press