Jurors sentence man to death in killing of officer
Jury deliberated for less than an hour
CORPUS CHRISTI - A Corpus Christi man was sentenced to the death penalty on Friday for killing a police officer during a high-speed chase.
Daniel Lee Lopez, 22, nodded his head and gave a faint smile as the judge announced the jury's decision.
Afterward, he said it had been what he expected and wanted all along. He waited for the day for nearly a year.
"I don't have to spend my life in prison," he said in an interview after the sentencing. Lopez had a chance at life in prison without parole before the trial but turned it down, Lt. Stuart Alexander's widow said during a news conference at the police station.
Vicky Alexander said she was thankful for the support from police, the community and the work of so many on the case. Nothing can bring back her husband of nearly 20 years, she said, but justice was served.
Earlier Friday, she met with Lopez's mother and gave her a rosary.
"We hugged and cried together," she said. "I was just compelled to do that."
She said she can't yet think about forgiving Lopez, who smiled openly throughout the trial.
"God is the only one who can forgive him," she said.
It took the jury less than an hour to reach the decision. They also sentenced Lopez to the maximum prison time on each of the other nine charges related to the chase.
That included five life sentences and $90,000 in fines.
Alexander, 47, was struck on March 11 while trying to stop Lopez's SUV with spike strips off North Padre Island Drive near the Agnes Street exit.
Police have said Lopez tried to kill other officers during the chase until he was shot.
Lopez said he regrets everything he did that night and he didn't mean to kill Alexander.
Lopez said he had been trying to avoid the spike strips on the road when he hit Alexander, who was found in a grassy median.
He said he had been able to avoid spike strips earlier in the chase by veering to the right and tried the same maneuver the second time. But unlike the first time when an officer was standing near his patrol car to the left Alexander was on the right side of the road.
"I'm sorry that it had to be him," Lopez said. "From what I heard he was a good officer."
He said he got teary-eyed from hearing Vicky Alexander's testimony on Thursday.
But even with that, Lopez still readily admitted that he purposely smiled at her and her family on the trial's first day.
He said he did it after he was wrongly accused of directing an obscene gesture to the family.
The other times he smiled in court weren't intended to upset them.
"I took it seriously but it's just my personality," he said.
Lopez's attorney Mark Woerner said he didn't think his client was evil, just disturbed.
"He's a hard guy to figure out. He may be the most complicated defendant I've had," he said.
Death penalty cases are automatically appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
Woerner said after that Lopez may follow through with his promise to waive any more of an appeals process.
"He truly wanted to be put to death," he said.
Lopez will become the sixth inmate from Nueces County on death row.
The last person from the county to be executed was Richard Cartwright in 2005, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was executed May 19, 2005, for the 1996 shooting death of 37-year-old Nick Moraida.
Woerner and attorney Luis Garcia had argued that Lopez had only been putting on the face of a monster and wouldn't be a future threat to society.
Garcia also reminded jurors that Lopez came from a broken home and twice tried to commit suicide as a boy – once by trying to slit his wrists and another time with an overdose of pills.
Prosecutor Bill Ainsworth, who said he was proud of the jury, had argued that instead of showing remorse Lopez had only bragged about the killing.
He reminded jurors of Lopez's past troubles: his assaults on three former girlfriends, a teacher and sex with two underage girls.
First Assistant District Attorney Mark Skurka later said Alexander died a hero doing what he loved: protecting the community as a proud police officer.
"Stuart Alexander gave his life for this community," he said.
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