Texas executes Christmas Eve cop killer

DALLAS (Reuters) - Texas executed a convicted killer by lethal injection on Thursday for his role in the slaying of a police officer on Christmas Eve 2000.

Michael Rodriguez, 45, was the eighth convict put to death this year by America's most active death penalty state. He was a member of a group, dubbed the "Texas Seven" by the local press, which broke out of a south Texas prison in December of 2000.

During a subsequent Christmas Eve robbery at a sporting goods store in the city of Irving near Dallas, the band of convicts killed police officer Aubrey Hawkins.

Five other members of the gang remain on death row while another committed suicide before he was captured.

In his last statement while strapped to a gurney in the state's execution chamber in Huntsville, Rodriguez apologized to his victim's family, saying: "I am so so sorry."

For his last meal he requested spicy fried chicken breast, grilled pork steak with grilled onions, a bacon cheeseburger with everything, a fresh garden salad with French dressing and French fries with ketchup.

Last meals are a ritual of U.S. executions.

Texas has 11 more executions scheduled for the rest of 2008 and one early in 2009 as it works through a death row "backlog" caused by a seven-month halt to capital punishment imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court as it heard a challenge to the three-drug cocktail method used in most lethal injections.

It rejected that challenge in April, paving the way for a resumption of executions in the United States. According to data compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, Rodriguez was the 20th convict put to death in the United States this year.

(Reporting by Ed Stoddard, editing by Eric Beech)