More than two decades after Max Soffar was sentenced to die for a Houston-area triple murder, an appellate court has ruled that his court-appointed attorney inadequately represented him during his 1980 trial and that he deserves to be retried within 120 days or freed from Texas’s death row. Although no evidence linking Soffar to the crime was ever found and his accounts of the murders, contained in what are believed to be false confessions, varied vastly from several eyewitnesses, Soffar’s defense attorney failed to pursue evidence that could have proven his client’s innocence. The attorney did not interview the sole surviving witness to the murders nor conduct a ballistics investigation that could have strengthened his case. In its opinion, the court wrote, “Defense counsel offered no reasonable explanation for why they did not take advantage of these opportunities. [It was] likely the result of indolence or incompetence.”

Three years ago, when the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected’s Soffar’s earlier motion for a new trial, Judge Harold R. DeMoss wrote in dissent: “I have laid awake nights agonizing over the enigmas, contradictions, and ambiguities which are inherent in this record. However, my colleagues…have shut their eyes to the big picture and have persuaded themselves that piecemeal justice is sufficient in this case…I am glad I will not be standing in their shoes, if and when Soffar is executed.” Soffar’s current attorney has said that he believes the more recent Fifth Circuit ruling will stand. (Dallas Morning News and KHOU News, April 22, 2004) Read the opinion Soffar v. Dretke. See Innocence. See also, Representation.