In the case of Patrick Wood v. Kevin Milyard, Warden et al., 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that courts have discretion to consider a habeas corpus petition on its merits even if state officials do not raise procedural defenses in their response to the petition. The petitioner, Patrick Wood, was convicted for murder and sentenced to death in Colorado state court. He filed a federal habeas corpus petition challenging his conviction and sentence but missed the one-year filing deadline under Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). However, Colorado officials did not assert this defense until years later during an appeal process after initially waiving it off as untimely raised by them. The Supreme Court held that while AEDPA's statute of limitations is important for finality in criminal cases; however it does not deprive a court from considering an untimely claim when State has deliberately waived such objection or forfeited it through inadvertence.

In the dissenting opinion for Patrick Wood v. Kevin Milyard, Warden et al., Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the majority's decision to allow courts to raise sua sponte a habeas petitioner’s failure to exhaust state remedies was inconsistent with previous case law and could potentially undermine future cases. He contended that this ruling would give federal judges excessive discretion in deciding when they can bypass procedural rules, which could lead to arbitrary decisions and unequal treatment of similar cases. Furthermore, he believed it contradicted the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)’s intent of limiting federal court intervention in state criminal proceedings by allowing them more leeway in raising procedural bars on their own initiative.