Texas set to execute inmate who killed guard in escape attempt

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas is scheduled to execute by lethal injection on Tuesday a man convicted of slamming a pickup truck into a mounted correctional officer in a prison escape attempt in 2007, knocking her off the horse and killing her. Jerry Martin, 43, has requested that there be no appeals of the execution, which is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. CST (1900 ET) at a state prison in Huntsville, Texas, about 70 miles north of Houston. Martin was serving a 50-year sentence for attempted murder and assault when he and a fellow inmate tried to escape from a prison detail doing farm work. Martin took an officer's weapon, ran to a parking lot and stole a Huntsville city truck. He was convicted of using the vehicle to kill Susan Canfield, 59, a correctional officer and a grandmother, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said. Martin would be the 16th person executed by Texas this year, the most of any state in 2013, and the 36th person executed in the United States this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas has executed 507 prisoners since the reinstatement of capital punishment by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, also the most of any U.S. state. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)