Texas inmate dies, still on death row after long, futile freedom campaign

By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A man who spent about 35 years on death row in Texas claiming he was innocent has died of natural causes at age 60, prison officials said on Tuesday, after decades of campaigning by anti-death penalty activists failed to have his conviction overturned.

Lawyers for the inmate, Max Soffar, asked the Texas governor and a court in 2014 to grant his release, saying he had been diagnosed with terminal and inoperable liver cancer.

He died on Sunday at the state's Polunsky Unit, which houses death row, officials said.

In 2014, his lawyers filed court papers that said: "Max Alexander Soffar is an innocent man on death row who is dying from a painful and aggressive form of liver cancer."

Soffar was convicted in the July 1980 slaying of three people at a Houston bowling alley. His supporters have said he was largely convicted on the basis of a confession signed after days of "oppressive interrogation" and without clear objective evidence pointing to his guilt.

The state has maintained the confession was voluntary, lawful and implicates him as the murderer.

The three people killed at the bowling alley were Arden Fisher, 17, her boyfriend Tommy Temple, 17, and Stephen Sims, 25. All three were shot execution-style with a handgun, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.

"Unlike many other death row inmates, six judges have acknowledged that the only evidence against Mr. Soffar - a statement he signed after days of oppressive interrogation - is fundamentally unreliable," his lawyers said in a court filing.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by David Gregorio)