Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard - Significance, Background, A Protected Life Interest On Death Row, Safeguarding Against Irresponsible Clemency, Impact

court petitioners amendment justices

Petitioners

Ohio Adult Parole Authority, et al.

Respondent

Eugene Woodard

Petitioners' Claim

That Ohio clemency procedures violated a death-row inmate's Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioners

Jeffrey S. Sutton

Chief Lawyer for Respondent

David H. Bodiker

Justices for the Court

Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas

Justices Dissenting

John Paul Stevens

Place

Washington, D.C.

Date of Decision

25 March 1998

Decision

Reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Held that neither the Fifth Amendment nor the Due Process Clause were violated by the state of Ohio's clemency procedures.

Related Cases

Greenholtz v. Nebraska Penal Inmates, 442 U.S. 1 (1979).
Connecticut Board of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U.S. 458 (1981).
Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U.S. 387 (1985).
Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986).
Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993).

Sources

Radelet, Michael L., and Barbara A. Zsembik. "Executive Clemency in Post-Furman Capital Cases." University of Richmond Law Review, Vol. 27, winter 1993.

Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard - Background

Ever since the establishment of the British colonies North America, the concept of clemency has been an integral part of the American justice system. Clemency can mean the granting of a pardon, or commutation, meaning the changing of a death sentence to life imprisonment. It has long been put to use as a fail-safe way to protect the innocent from wrongful execution. At the end of the twentieth cen…

Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard - A Protected Life Interest On Death Row

In 1990, Eugene Woodard was convicted in Ohio of aggravated murder and sentenced to die on 7 October 1994. In 1993 and 1994, his conviction and his death sentence were affirmed by the Ohio Court of Appeals and the Ohio Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in 1994. The Ohio Supreme Court, however, on 24 August 1994 stayed the execution date so that Woodard could seek post-convict…

Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard - Safeguarding Against Irresponsible Clemency

Justice O'Connor concurred in part with the judgment. She took some exception, however, with the idea that a death-row inmate's interest in life had been extinguished. She felt that although clemency had always been an executive privilege, and not the business of the judiciary, some "minimal procedural safeguards apply to clemency proceedings." She reasoned that the courts may be correct in interv…

Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard - Statistics On Clemency

Generally, clemency is an act of mercy or leniency. Clemency includes pardons, reprieves, and commutations of criminal sentences, and it is given to a criminal defendant by the president on the federal level, and, in most instances, by the governor on the state level. There is no single source for data on the granting of clemency in the United States, but the National Association for the Advanceme…

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