It's that time of year: The U.S. Supreme Court will convene next week for a new term. While the last few terms have seen the court deliver seismic decisions on abortion, affirmative action and voting rights, they've been tougher to read in another crucial area: criminal justice. Here's a look at where they stand on criminal law reform issues today and one case to keep an eye on.

Not rocking the boat in wide-reaching cases

The court's recent criminal law decisions have generally been less polarized compared with other areas such as abortion and affirmative action. Though the court often rules in favor of the government in criminal matters, it sides with defendants in a surprising number of cases.

There's one catch: The court tends to side with defendants under narrow circumstances, when their decisions won't have a wide-ranging impact.

Take Ramos v. Louisiana, which invalidated nonunanimous juries. The ruling required juries to reach unanimous guilty verdicts in trials for serious felony crimes. In so doing, the 6-3 majority acknowledged the roots of nonunanimous juries in the enforcement of Jim Crow. This decision could help prevent innocent defendants from being convicted and safeguard against decisions based on racial bias.

However, this ruling only affected Louisiana and Oregon, the last two states to maintain this practice. Furthermore, due to excessively harsh sentencing laws and coercive plea bargaining tactics, jury trials have become a rarity. The court ruled the very next term that its decision is not retroactive, so it can't be applied to past felony cases; the states will be left to decide which older cases it applies to. The court went even further and held it would no longer apply new rules of criminal procedure retroactively at all.

Taking a tough stance on federal habeas corpus law

The one throughline in the court's rulings involving the criminal legal system is its draconian interpretation of federal habeas corpus law. In Jones v. Hendrix, the Supreme Court ruled that federally incarcerated people who are actually innocent — because the Supreme Court later found the conduct was not criminal — can still be held in prison without any ability to petition a court for release.

Basically, the Supreme Court used a strict interpretation of the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The law states that incarcerated people generally can't challenge their conviction more than once. There are two exceptions: when new evidence demonstrating innocence emerges or when a new rule of constitutional law is made retroactive by the Supreme Court. The court said Jones' situation did not fit either exception. He fell into a gaping hole in federal habeas corpus: Though he was innocent, it was because of a new legal ruling, not new evidence, and that ruling was based on a federal statute, rather than the Constitution. There were other ways to interpret the statute, but the court rejected them. So an innocent man sits in jail to this day with no judicial recourse.

Avoiding the big questions

More broadly, the court has avoided answering important criminal procedural questions. For one, the court recently denied review of the ACLU's case Hester v. Gentry. That lawsuit challenges the widespread practice in Alabama of detaining people prior to trial for weeks or months simply because they cannot afford cash bail. The case argues this practice is unconstitutional, in part because the right to pretrial liberty is fundamental and cannot be denied unless the government has a compelling reason. The court has not ruled on these issues in nearly 40 years. In its silence, practices like this have proliferated nationwide.

The court has also generally declined to review cases challenging the qualified immunity doctrine, such as Novak v. Parma. Qualified immunity prevents government officials and law enforcement officers from being sued for money damages for violating someone's rights. The ACLU has long called for the court or Congress to abolish this doctrine. After Ohio resident Anthony Novak was arrested for publishing a parody of the Parma Police Department's Facebook page, he filed a civil lawsuit against the department for violating his First Amendment rights. By rejecting Novak's appeal, the Supreme Court denied any remedy for this constitutional violation.

As the next term approaches, we're unlikely to see major changes in the Supreme Court's stance on criminal justice issues. One case of interest is Pulsifier v. United States, in which the court will decide whether "and" means "and" or "or" under the 2018 First Step Act in determining whether a defendant qualifies for the "safety valve" provision under federal sentencing law. The safety valve allows federal judges to sentence defendants convicted of certain drug crimes below the mandatory minimum — an effort by Congress to mitigate some of the harms from the failed war on drugs. Though a favorable result maintaining broad access to the safety valve is uncertain, it is made more plausible because relief would be narrow. Judges would not be required to sentence below the mandatory minimum; they would simply have the discretion to do so.

A win here, while welcome, will not change the fact that the court has staked out a conservative middle ground where it will only advance individual rights in cases with less of a ripple effect, while maintaining an inscrutable combination lock on the courthouse doors for defendants asserting these rights. We'll be watching closely to see if this trend continues in the new term.

Brandon Buskey is the director of the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project. For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all. To find out more about the ACLU and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

DIST. BY CREATORS

Photo credit: Andrew MacDonald at Unsplash