a jury agreed this morning that Max Alexander Soffar, 50, should return to death row for killing Arden Alane Felsher, 17, during an attack that also left 2 other young people dead and another teenager severely wounded....

a jury agreed that Max Alexander Soffar, 50, should return to death row for killing Arden Alane Felsher, 17, during an attack that also left 2 other young people dead and another teenager severely wounded.
The jury convicted Soffar last week for the July 13, 1980 killing of Felsher during the robbery of Stephen Allen Sims, 25, an assistant manager at a Bowling Center. Also killed in the attack were Sims and Felsher's boyfriend, Tommy Lee Temple, 17. Gregory George Garner, 18, also was shot in the head during the 1980 attack but survived.
Soffar was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1981, but on August 30, 2001 a 3-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction because his conviction relied "almost exclusively" on confessions illegally made to the police in the absence of a lawyer. The order was later overturned by the full court.
On April 22, 2004, the death sentence was overturned a second time by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying that he had received an inadequate defense during his 1981 trial.
A few years ago, Max Soffar made a fuss when Texas prison officials told him that he could not have a rabbi attend him before his execution. Not long afterward, he asked his lawyer to make sure he would be buried in the same Jewish cemetery as his adoptive parents rather than under a nameless cross in the prison cemetery in Huntsville like his fellow death-row inmates.