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| Max Soffar |
Max Soffar has a long history of self-medicating. When he was 4, his parents found him passed out next to their car, gas cap in hand. Since birth, Max's brain has been damaged. That damage has been made worse by years of physical and mental abuse by adoptive parents and staff at mental institutions.
At the age of 24 in 1980, Max had the mentality of an 11-year-old. His brain was "fried," according to police, who knew him as a dropout and wannabe police informant. Officers arrested Max on a stolen motorcycle after an infamous robbery-murder at a Houston bowling alley that year.
The police locked Max in a small room and subjected him to a 3-day marathon of aggressive, unrecorded interrogation - marked by prodding, pressure, and lies - which culminated in a false confession, typed by police, that the officers convinced a worn down Max to sign.
Max has spent the last 34 years on death row in Texas, but he won't be alive long enough to be executed. Max has terminal liver cancer. The question isn't whether he will die; it is only how soon and where: behind bars or at home.
The forced confession is the only evidence tying Max to the murder. The state has no DNA, no fingerprints, and no forensic or other reliable evidence to connect Max to the crime. What's more, and as several appeals judges have found over the years, the confession is demonstrably false: It narrates a story that clashes dramatically with the account of the only surviving witness and with the other known evidence of how the crime occurred.
It's not just the fact that the state put Max on death row with only a false confession. This whole story of justice gone miserably awry is made worse by the large mountain of evidence implicating another man, who died on Tennessee's death row in 2013.
The man's name is Paul Reid. The week before the shootings, Reid got into an altercation with employees at the bowling alley and threatened to blow their heads off. He was living and committing robberies in Houston at the time, and he wasn't at home with his wife on the night the shootings occurred. Reid looks like the police composite of the shooter, and he went on to commit a series of similar crimes in Tennessee, for which he was caught.
But this evidence of innocence alone won't help Max make it home, to die in the arms of his loving wife Anita. Max has spent the last 34 years on death row because of numerous errors during his original trial and a lugubrious appeals process that will not be over before Max dies.
It falls to Gov. Rick Perry to show Max mercy by using his power to grant him clemency. This innocent man should be allowed to die at home, with the support of his friends and family.
Source: ACLU, August 14, 2014
Attorneys: Free inmate; he's dying anyway
Harris County opposed rare clemency plea in 1980 robbery-murder
Harris County opposed rare clemency plea in 1980 robbery-murder
Attorneys have made a rare clemency request for 1 of Texas' longest-serving death row inmates, saying he should be freed before inoperable liver cancer soon takes his life.
Max Soffar, 58, has been on death row more than 33 years for a 1980 robbery at a Houston bowling alley were 3 people were shot and killed and a 4th mained. Soffar and his lawyers long have maintained he's innocent, although he has been tried, convicted and condemned twice, most recently in 2006.
"Nothing can save me; I'm going to die," Soffar told the Associated Press on Wednesday. He said doctors discovered a tumor in June. "I've talked to my doctor - maybe 5 months, maybe 4 months, maybe 3 weeks."
There is no precedent, at least in modern times, for the Texas Board of Pardons and paroles to recommned to the governor that clemency be granted in a death penalty case under such circumstances. Requests typically are filed as an inmate's execution is nearing or imminent. Soffar does not have an execution date and an appeal for him remains before a federal court in Houston.
"The reality is that the federal court process will likely not be completed before Mr. Soffar dies," the lawyers said in the petition.
The Harris County district attorney's office will oppose the request, said Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney who handles capital case appeals. The Texas prison system has medical facilities to treat inmates, she said.
"I haven't seen any medical records verifying anything," she said. "And while he should be humanely treated, I do not think that means he should be granted compassionate leave so he is given his freedom."
Soffar's 1st conviction was thrown out in 2004 by a federal appeals court panel that said he had deficient legal help at his 1st trial in 1981. Wilson said Sooffar's 2nd conviction was solid and dismissed arguments from Soffar and his attorneys that a convicted serial killer in Tennessee was responsible for the crimes.
Source: Associated Press, August 14, 2014
Death Row, Revisited
Clemency merited in shaky Soffar case
Is this the type of execution Texans are comfortable with?
Texans overwhelmingly support the death penalty, and, if we may presume to read their minds, the kind of execution they're comfortable with looks like this: It involves a perpetrator whose guilt is beyond dispute, who's fully responsible for his actions, and whose arrest and prosecution were free of any hint of chicanery.
That man is not Max Soffar, 58, a Texas death row inmate since Ronald Reagan's 6th month in the White House.
The bizarre passage of 33 years is one tip-off that the state has a problematic case against Soffar, convicted twice in a triple slaying during a stickup at a Houston bowling alley.
A 2-bit hood, Soffar was a mentally impaired, drug-addled police snitch who was a glue sniffer at age 5. He had a reputation for saying anything to get himself out of a jam. In fact, he talked his way into a police interrogation room after the triple slayings to implicate a buddy who'd made him angry. Soffar wouldn't shut up, and after 3 days of questioning - with no lawyer present - Soffar ended up making a series of confessions.
Never mind that all Soffar's claims didn't jibe or that he later recanted. Never mind that prosecutors had no forensic evidence or eyewitness to place him at the scene. Cops had their confession, such as it was, and that was persuasive with a jury.
Later, a cop acquaintance who had brought Soffar in for questioning testified for him on appeal, saying he didn't think Soffar was capable of the slayings. In a decision granting Soffar a new trial, a federal appeals judge excoriated the case as thin on evidence and dependent on Soffar's disputed confession.
Despite the questions, the state got a 2nd guilty verdict and death sentence in 2006. Jurors were not allowed to hear evidence about a plausible alternative suspect, a serial robber-killer. They didn't hear details of how skilled interrogators are able to extract confessions from malleable suspects.
Since that trial, false confessions have been established as a very real phenomenon, proved through scores of DNA exonerations nationwide.
Today, Soffar's appellate lawyers continue to battle the state, but he's got a bigger fight on his hands - an aggressive strain of liver cancer that could prove fatal within months.
The Constitution Project, a bipartisan justice reform group, has taken up for Soffar in a clemency petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Writing for the group, former Texas Gov. Mark White and former FBI Director William Sessions ask for compassionate relief so Soffar can die at home.
It's a good bet Soffar doesn't get that relief, and it's a good bet that cancer will take him before appeals are exhausted and the executioner is cleared to proceed in Huntsville.
Still, the clemency request serves a righteous purpose. It lays out another Texas capital case where the facts consist of many hazy shades of gray. Texans should know the uncomfortable truth about who's cleared to be executed in their name.
Source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News, August 14, 2014