Hi and welcome to Amicus, Slate Supreme Court podcast. I am Dahlia Lithwick. I cover the courts and the law for Slate.

This week, Capitol Hill is blooming with its usual spring flora and the gentle scent of filibuster is perfuming the air as well.

Senate Democrats seem to be marshalling their energy behind an effort to block Judge

Neil Gorsuch from being seated at the High Court.

Senate Republicans are promising to respond with a rules change, called the nuclear option,

that would allow for Supreme Court confirmation with a simple majority vote.

Republicans are vowing that Gorsuch will be confirmed on April 7th next Friday with or without

the Democrats behind it. This week, we're going to talk a little bit about the history of confirmation

votes with the co-author of a book on Senate confirmation hearings. But first, there have been big developments

on the criminal justice front at the Supreme Court this week, starting with a decision in a death

penalty case to overturn a capital punishment sentence in which the state of Texas used outdated

standards for diagnosing intellectual disability for the defendant. The court also heard a big case on Tuesday, turning on the question of whether those subject to deportation as a result of bad legal advice have a constitutional claim about ineffective assistance of counsel.

On Wednesday, the court heard a pair of criminal law cases that have all the hallmarks of a John Grishon novel if the novel was written in the 1980s.

Turner v. U.S. and Overton v. U.S. reopened an incredibly fact-specific question around a brutal murder of a young woman in Washington, D.C. in 1984.

Eight men have cumulatively served 232 years in prison for what may have

effectively been the Washington, D.C. version of the Central Park Jogger case. This week,

lawyers for those men tried to convince the justices of the Supreme Court that prosecutors in that case suppressed crucial exculpatory evidence over 30 years ago.

Joining us now is Thomas L. Dibdahl. He's writing a book about these murders and was in the courtroom on Wednesday.

Welcome to Amicus, Tom.

Thank you. Tom, you've been involved in this case since 2008, but I need you to take us all the way back to 1984 to help us understand the unbelievable drama around the murder of Catherine Fuller in Washington, D.C.

Well, the case really gripped the community because she was a tiny woman, 99 pounds,

the mother of six children, frail and but well known in the community.

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