HUNTSVILLE, Texas – The widow of a Texas police officer struck and killed during a high-speed chase watched the convicted driver’s execution by lethal injection Wednesday with trepidation and also a sense of justice served.

As a career nurse, Vicky Alexander said, her life’s been devoted to saving others and observing the execution of Daniel Lee Lopez, who wanted to die, was “totally against my grain.”

Then, she added: “This has nothing to do with revenge. This has to do with the law.  He broke the ultimate law, and he had to pay the ultimate price, as my husband did.”

Alexander said she believed Lopez showed “a little bit of remorse” when he waited for her to acknowledge him during eye contact as he was strapped to the gurney in the Huntsville State Prison death chamber.

Lopez, 27, was condemned to death for the killing of Corpus Christi, Texas, Police Lt. Stuart Alexander with his SUV while fleeing from authorities at high speed in March of 2009.  His struck the officer as he was placing spiked strips across a highway to disable Lopez’ vehicle.

He resisted his court-appointed attorneys legal appeal efforts and asked that his execution date be moved up. Lopez was on death row for six years. The average wait for execution in Texas, which carries out capital punishment more than any other state, is more than 10 years. 

Attorneys for Lopez tried to prevent the execution on the grounds the condemned convict suffered from severe mental illness and that the crime did not qualify for the death penalty because Lopez did not mean to kill the officer. But those arguments were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lopez, a registered sex offender, was on probation for indecency with a child at the time of officer’s killing.  Testimony at his trial said he had at least five children by three women, and a sixth was born while he was jailed for Alexander’s death. He also had a history of assaults as a youth, dropping out of school as a high school sophomore.

Lopez was the 10^th inmate executed by Texas this year, compared with only eight in other states with the death penalty. Texas has more than 250 prisoners on death row, many of whom have been there for years because of the appeal process.

Lopez’s execution took 15 minutes after the lethal dose of drugs was injected. He was pronounced dead at 6:31 p.m. CDT Wednesday. His attorneys said he wanted to commit suicide by death penalty.

Asked to if he wanted to make a final statement, Lopez, staring at the death chamber’s witness room window, said:  “I hope this execution helps my family and also the victim’s family. This was never meant to be, sure beyond my power. I can only walk the path before me and make the best of it. I am sorry for putting y’all through this. I am sorry. I love you.”

Outside the prison, members of the Thin Blue Line Motorcycle Club revved their engines to drown out the voices of assembled death penalty protestors. About a dozen Corpus Christi and Huntsville police officers were also present. They saluted and shook the hand of Vicky Alexander as she left after the execution.

Details for this story were provided by the Huntsville, Texas, Item.