Attorneys for Texas death row inmate Max Soffar, who is dying of liv­er can­cer, con­tin­ue to seek a rever­sal of his case, even though judi­cial action — if it comes — may be too late. Soffar main­tains his inno­cence in the 1980 mur­ders of three peo­ple dur­ing a bowl­ing alley rob­bery. The sole evi­dence against Soffar is a con­fes­sion he signed after three days of unrecord­ed inter­ro­ga­tion that is incon­sis­tent with the facts of the case and, he main­tains, is false. The con­fes­sion also does not match the account of the mur­ders pro­vid­ed by a man who sur­vived the shoot­ing. No phys­i­cal evi­dence links Soffar to the crime and Soffar has pre­sent­ed evi­dence that anoth­er man, a ser­i­al killer, was much more like­ly to have com­mit­ted the mur­ders. Governor Rick Perry reject­ed a clemen­cy peti­tion last year that sought to allow Soffar to spend his last days at home. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles said that Soffar isn’t eli­gi­ble for clemen­cy because there is no war­rant for his exe­cu­tion. Andrew Horne, one of Soffar’s attor­neys, said, ​“Justice is where there’s a fair sys­tem that was fol­lowed and offered an out­come that was ratio­nal. To me, Max is an injus­tice because there was nev­er a fair sys­tem, and the out­come was completely irrational.” 

(M. Berryhill, ​“The lost appeals of Max Soffar,” Houston Chronicle, April 3, 2015.) See Innocence and Clemency.

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