HUNTSVILLE, Texas — An Indiana man who embarked on a cross-country crime spree with his girlfriend a decade ago that ended in a gun battle with police in San Francisco was executed Thursday for robbing and murdering a sheriff's officer in San Antonio.
No late court appeals were filed for 31-year-old Joshua Maxwell (pictured), who was condemned for gunning down Bexar County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Rudy Lopes and stealing his truck. The 45-year-old veteran jailer was off duty at the time.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to review Maxwell's case.
Maxwell, his voice breaking and choking back tears, apologized repeatedly in the seconds before lethal drugs began flowing into his arms.
"The person that did that 10 years ago isn't the same person you see today," he said. "I hurt a lot of people with decisions I made. I can't be more sorry than I am right now."
Nine minutes later, at 6:27 p.m. CST, he was pronounced dead, making him the fourth inmate executed this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state.
He was among at least 10 Texas death row inmates with execution dates in the coming months, including two more later this month.
In late 2000, Maxwell and his girlfriend, Tessie McFarland, crisscrossed the country in a deadly crime spree, beginning in Indiana with the robbery and slaying of Robby Bott, 45, a FedEx mechanic from Mooresville, Ind. Lopes was killed a month later in October 2000, his bound and blindfolded body dumped behind a San Antonio shopping mall.
Less than a week after Lopes' body was found, Maxwell and McFarland were arrested after a police chase and running gun battle through downtown San Francisco after Maxwell, driving Lopes' stolen truck, refused to be pulled over for running a red light.
"There's really no explanation," Maxwell told The San Antonio Express-News recently from death row. "All the way from the top to the bottom, just senseless."
He also acknowledged he committed a number of robberies, still unsolved, during the trek from Indiana to Florida, Texas and California.
McFarland, a former stripper, was wounded during the police chase in San Francisco. Lopes' credit card, badge and service weapon were recovered from the truck, along with a Chinese-made 9 mm pistol determined to be the gun used to fatally shoot Lopes in the top of the head.
Maxwell was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in Lopes' killing. In Indiana, he was convicted of murder, felony confinement, arson and theft in Bott's slaying.
McFarland, 30, is serving a life prison term in Texas after pleading guilty to Lopes' slaying.
Source: AP, March 11, 2010
