Texas 7 member executed:

America

Garcia

Texas on Tuesday executed a member of the “Texas 7,” a group of inmates who killed a police officer at a sporting goods store on Christmas Eve in 2000 after they escaped a maximum security prison days earlier.

Joseph Garcia, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:43 pm local time. He was put to death by lethal injection in the state’s death chamber in Huntsville, the state’s department of criminal justice said.

“Yes Sir Dear Heavenly Father please forgive them for they know not what they do,” he said before he died, according to the department.

The US Supreme Court rejected a series of petitions to stay the execution shortly before it began.

Garcia was serving a 50-year sentence for murder when he and six other inmates broke out of maximum security prison in Kenedy, Texas, on Dec 13, 2000, according to court documents.

Eleven days later, on Christmas Eve, Garcia and the other escapees robbed a sporting goods store in Irving. Police officer Aubrey Hawkins, 31, was shot and killed by the group as the men fled, according to court filings.

They were apprehended about a month later at a Colorado RV park where one of the escapees committed suicide.

Garcia was sentenced to die in 2013 after he was convicted of capital murder of a police officer.

Despite not shooting Hawkins, he was convicted of murder under the state’s law of parties, a statue that holds a person criminally responsible if they act as an accomplice. (RTRS)