Will Rick Perry Grant Clemency to Max Soffar?

[Disir]

How do you get mercy for a dying man on death row—a man who is also, by almost every account, innocent? You go to the governor. And around noon today, that’s just what the attorneys for Max Soffar did. Soffar’s attorneys, Andrew Horne and Brian Stull, visited the governor’s office in the State Capitol, bringing a petition started by famous anti-capital punishment advocate Sister Helen Prejean. Soffar has been on death row since 1980 but he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer only last year. Sister Prejean worked with the ACLU and change.org to create a petition asking Governor Perry to grant clemency to Soffar. More than 115,000 people signed the document, which reads in part, "Grant Max Soffar clemency so he can die at home, in the arms of his loving wife Anita, and with the support of his friends and family."

Will Rick Perry Grant Clemency to Max Soffar Texas Monthly

Should he?

You may have heard of Max, who is 58 and dying of liver cancer. He’s also on death row, his home for 33 years. Most guys get sent to death row because of serious proof that they did a terrible crime—things like DNA evidence or eyewitnesses. Not Max. Oh, the crime was terrible, all right: three young people were murdered in a Houston bowling alley in 1980, shot in the head execution-style. But Max was convicted without one shred of physical evidence to tie him to the crime—no fingerprints, no blood, no hair, no DNA, no gun, and no witnesses.

Only one thing connected Max to the murders, and that was his confession, though it was at odds with almost every crime-scene fact. Two different juries—in 1981 and 2006—believed that a man wouldn’t confess to something he didn’t do, and they sent him to death. Over the years, though, plenty of people have come to believe he got a raw deal, from dozens of lawyers willing to work for Max pro bono to five different federal and state judges. One is a conservative federal judge named Harold DeMoss, who wrote in 2002, “I have laid awake nights agonizing over the enigmas, contradictions, and ambiguities” in Max’s case. Another is a judge you are quite familiar with, Governor: Cathy Cochran, whom you appointed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals back in 2001. “I find this case quite troubling,” she wrote only two years ago. “There is something very wrong about this case.”

Governor Perry Have Mercy on This Man Texas Monthly

Soffar was arrested in 1980 for an infamous robbery-murder at a Houston bowling alley. After trying to turn in an acquaintance for the bowling-alley murders, Soffar eventually implicated himself after being subjected to a three-day marathon of aggressive, unrecorded interrogation, which culminated in a false confession, typed by police, that the officers convinced a worn down Soffar to sign. The police discovered almost immediately that one of Soffar’s claims – that he had burglarized the bowling-alley the night before – was completely false. At the time, Soffar was 24 years old, but because of a long history of brain damage and substance abuse, he had the mental capacity of an 11-year-old.

In 1981, Soffar went to trial represented by a Houston lawyer known both for having slept through his clients’ capital-murder trials and for having stacked up a long list of clients sentenced to death. Based on his statements, Soffar was convicted and sentenced to death.

The false confession is the only piece of evidence linking Soffar to the crime. As noted in the petition for clemency, several judges have concluded that the confession is inconsistent with other evidence in the case, which clearly points to a man named Paul Reid — a serial killer who died in 2013 on Tennessee’s death row. Reid can be linked to the scene and confessed to the crime to one of his accomplices.

State of Texas v. Max Soffar American Civil Liberties Union

This is an insane case.