Whether Texas's failure to provide Garcia with a clemency proceeding that comports with Texas law violates the minimal due process rights—including the fundamental due process right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard—to which Garcia is entitled under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In 1997, the Texas legislature enacted Texas Government Code section 508.032, which established two membership requirements for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (“Board”): first, “[b]oard members must be representative of the general public”; and second, “a member must have resided in [Texas] for two years before appointment.” Tex. Gov’t Code § 508.032. According to a 1983 report authored by the Sunset Commission—which the Texas legislature established in 1977 to oversee government agencies—the phrase “general public” in § 508.032 was intended to guarantee the impartiality of the Board by ensuring that members did not, as a whole, represent the same interests. The Commission envisioned “giving the public a direct voice . . . through representation on the board.” In 2003, the Texas legislature took steps to further both the impartiality and representativeness of the Board by adding membership requirements to § 508.032 that prohibited “more than three members” of the Board from being “former employees” of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (“TDCJ”) at any given time. Currently, and in contravention of the foregoing statutory requirements, six out of seven Board members are either former TDCJ employees, former lawenforcement officers, or both. Accordingly, the Board fails to be representative of the general public. On November 30, 2018, this Board unanimously denied Petitioner Joseph Garcia’s application for clemency, in a case where Garcia is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, December 4, 2018 for the death of a police officer who he neither killed nor intended to kill. The questions presented by this case are the following: 1. Whether Texas’s failure to provide Garcia with a clemency proceeding that comports with Texas law violates the minimal due process rights—including the fundamental due process right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard—to which Garcia is entitled under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause? 2. Whether this Court’s decision in Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard, 523 U.S. 272 (1998), requires states to adhere to state laws governing clemency proceedings in order to comport with the Fourteenth Amendment’s minimal due process guarantees? i