Imagine you’re dying of cancer and totally alone, 24/7, except for the doctors who visit to take care of you. Now imagine you’ve been on death row for 34 years because, as a dumb 24-year-old, you thought signing a confession would give you rest from the 3 days of constant questioning you’ve been going through. You didn’t commit the crime–as all the evidence indicates–but you did sign that confession.
This is the plight of a real-life person named Max. Despite the fact that he has very little time to live, evidence that shouts “not guilty,” and a questionable confession coming out of confusion and exhaustion, Texas will not grant him and his family the basic human compassion of being allowed to die at home and with those who are suffering with him.
Sr. Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, explains more about it in Let Max Soffar, an Innocent Man, Die at Home. Read it and watch the video. Then, if you agree, sign her petition on that same site.