Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard

By limiting the involvement the judiciary can have in questions concerning the executive power to grant clemency, the Court gave more autonomy to the states. Charles Hobson of the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation stated,

This decision makes it clear that a state's clemency process is essentially unavailable for scrutiny by federal courts. Had the court adopted . . . [Woodard's] claims, every state would have had to choose between abandoning clemency altogether or having it dictated to them by federal judges.

Yet others, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that without authoritative framing of

basic procedural standards by [the Supreme] Court, clemency can no longer be relied on to fulfill its historical role in state schemes of capital punishment.