Author Description

A wide variety of moral compasses is sitting in every jury box! Jurors bring their religions and spiritual beliefs with them to court and rely upon personal moral compasses during deliberations. Every trial, civil or criminal, can become a battle of good and evil in the minds of the jurors, yet trial advocacy books have ignored this dynamic. This book invites trial practitioners, attorneys, judges, and consultants to engage in new thinking about how jurors' moral compasses affect trial outcomes. Dr. SunWolf was a long-time trial and appellate attorney, now an award-winning social scientist and university professor, who takes the reader into the latest research about the psychology of good and evil and our believing brain--then points to specific ways every juror's religious thinking impacts a verdict, including: The Neuroscience of Fair Play The Social Psychology of Good and Evil The God Gene and the Biology of Belief The Science of Moral Dilemmas Questionnaire Items that Uncover a Juror's Moral Compass Voir Dire Questions and Conversations about the Jury Pool's Religious Thinking Trial Tools and Motions that Take a Juror's God-Thinking Into Account Pre-Trial Investigations that Reveal a Community's Religious Landscape As trial practitioners, our job must deal with the variety of moral belief systems jurors are bringing to our courtrooms, in a manner that moves us towards fairer trials and more just verdicts.