In the campaign, Trump lay on a bed of nails.

He had so many different problems, but his weight was equally distributed.

Think of this as sort of like you've got two armies, you've got the prosecution and the defense,

and if one army has all of the weaponry and the other has none whatsoever, it's not going to be a very fair fight.

Hi, and welcome to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the Supreme Court and the courts and the law.

I'm Dolly Lithwick and I cover that stuff for Slate.

Another week, another round of nasty remarks from President Donald Trump about another federal judge.

The president's latest volley was directed at a district court judge in California, who at least

temporarily blocked the White House from withholding federal funds from so-called sanctuary

cities. And later on in today's show, we're going to try to catch up with our old new friend

the Constitution's emoluments clause. But first, this week, mark the end of oral arguments

for the time being, at least at the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices heard their last case of the

term on Wednesday, and decisions will come in June. The case we want to talk about today was heard

on Monday, and it tries to set a legal standard for what kind of expert psychiatric assistance an indigent defendant should be given at his trial.

Oddly enough, that's the exact same question that the state of Arkansas is trying to figure out, and the reason they actually stayed some executions last week.

The case as it came to the Supreme Court is called McWilliams v. Dunn.

This case actually dates back to a 1984 capital conviction of James McWilliams,

who raped and murdered Patricia Reynolds during a robbery at the Tuscaloosa, Alabama convenience store where she worked.

McWilliams claims he was entitled to a psychological expert who could have helped him prove his mental illness, the state of

Alabama, and several federal appeals courts claim, no, he was only entitled to a neutral

expert. Stephen Bright, who's been working on death penalty litigation at the Southern

Center for Human Rights since 1982, represented Mr. McWilliams at oral argument at the court.

...