Texas Inmate Dies Days Before Appeals Court Hearing On His Innocence Claim

On April 24, just days before a Texas fed­er­al appeals courts was to hear his case, Max Soffar — who spent 35 years on death row con­stant­ly main­tain­ing his inno­cence — died of liv­er can­cer at the age of 60. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Soffar to the crime for which he was sen­tenced to death, and Soffar — a sev­enth-grade drop-out with brain dam­age from fetal alco­hol syn­drome — said that he con­fessed to police only after hours of coercive questioning. 

In a 2014 inter­view, Soffar said, ​“Everything in those state­ments that I made does not match the crime scene. It’s all made up off the top of my head.” 

After Soffar’s first con­vic­tion was over­turned in 2006, he tried to present evi­dence at his retri­al that the mur­der had been com­mit­ted by anoth­er man who was lat­er con­vict­ed of sim­i­lar mur­ders in Tennessee. The tri­al court exclud­ed the evi­dence, a wit­ness to whom that man had alleged­ly con­fessed did not tes­ti­fy after pros­e­cu­tors threat­ened to try him for mur­der, and Soffar was again con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. Soffar then peti­tioned Governor Rick Perry for clemen­cy in 2014, receiv­ing sup­port from for­mer FBI direc­tor William Sessions and for­mer Texas Governor Mark White.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recent­ly grant­ed Soffar per­mis­sion to appeal the U.S. District Court’s 2014 denial of a writ of habeas cor­pus. His hear­ing in that appeal was sched­uled for April 27. 

Andrew Horne, an attor­ney for Soffar, said “[h]is con­fes­sion was demon­stra­bly false. There was evi­dence anoth­er man com­mit­ted the crime.” Horne added, ​“Max was very excit­ed about the Fifth Circuit rul­ing, very opti­mistic.… I’m glad he’s not suf­fer­ing any­more, but I’m frus­trat­ed that he didn’t get his rights vin­di­cat­ed. He protest­ed his inno­cence to the last.”