Member of 'Texas 7' set to be executed in policeman's killing

[March 28, 2019]  (Reuters) - The state of Texas on Thursday is scheduled to execute a member of the “Texas 7,” a group of inmates convicted of killing a police officer at a sporting goods store on Christmas Eve in 2000 after they escaped a maximum security prison days earlier.

Patrick Murphy, 57, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. CDT (0000 GMT) by lethal injection in the state's death chamber in Huntsville, the state's department of criminal justice said.

Murphy was serving a 50-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault 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, Murphy 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.

Murphy was sentenced to die in 2003 after he was convicted of capital murder of a police officer.

Murphy was in a vehicle, serving as a lookout and did not shoot Hawkins during the robbery, according to prosecutors. But he was still convicted of murder under the state’s law of parties, a statute that holds a person criminally responsible if they act as an accomplice.

Since his sentence, Murphy's attorneys have filed several unsuccessful appeals challenging the merits of the case, including the constitutionality of the law of parties statute.

On Tuesday, his lawyers filed an appeal in federal court arguing that his religious freedom rights have been violated by Texas, which will not allow a Buddhist priest to accompany him in the death chamber.

Four of the escaped inmates have been executed while Murphy and one other are on death row.

If executed, Murphy will be the third inmate to be put to death in Texas and the fourth in the United States in 2019, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, an organization that tracks the death penalty in the United States.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; editing by Bill Tarrant and G Crosse)

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