HUNTSVILLE, Texas — One of the infamous "Texas 7" convicts who escaped from a state prison more than seven years ago and killed a Dallas-area police officer while on the lam 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.

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 Rodriguez's 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.

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