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.”