[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

April 25




TEXAS----death row inmate dies

On death row 35 years, Texas inmate dies of natural causes


Texas prison officials say a man on death row for 35 years for a Houston 
robbery where 3 people were shot and killed has died of natural causes.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark says 60-year-old Max 
Soffar died Sunday at the infirmary at the Polunsky Unit prison, home of the 
state's male death row.

Soffar had said he was being treated for liver cancer.

He was condemned in 1981, a year after the slayings of 17-year-old Arden Alane 
Felsher, her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tommy Lee Temple, and 25-year-old Stephen 
Allen Sims, an assistant manager at a bowling alley that was being robbed.

Soffar was retried in 2006 and convicted again.

Only 6 of the some 250 condemned inmates in Texas have served more time than 
Soffar.

(source: Associated Press)