This team, along with input from active, responding jurors, will explore continued development of the jury process. Feedback is as critical to improving the performance of the citizen juror, as it is to that of the citizen advocate in general public policy formation.
Scott E. Sundby
Professor of Law at University of Miami School of Law
Scott Sundby teaches a variety of courses in the criminal law and procedure area. Professor Sundby’s writings focus on criminal law and constitutional law issues. Much of his research has been conducted as part of the Capital Jury Project, a study funded by the National Science Foundation that is designed to understand how juries decide whether or not to impose the death penalty. His articles based on the Project have examined a variety of aspects of the death-penalty decision, including the role of the defendant’s remorse in affecting the jury’s decision, the impact of expert witnesses, the importance of how the jurors perceive the victim, and how different trial strategies influence the jury’s choice between a life and death sentence.
Sundby has been particularly struck by the intensely human nature of the decision as jurors grapple with moral, legal and personal issues. His book, written in 2017, “A Life and Death Decision: A Jury Weighs the Death Penalty,” focuses on the human side of the decision by listening to how different jurors from the same case describe their jury’s decision to impose a death sentence.
See: www.law.miami.edu
Hon. Paul De Muniz
Distinguished Jurist in Residence at Willamette University in Oregon
Honorable Paul J. De Muniz was elected to the Oregon Supreme Court in 2000 and served as the court’s Chief Justice and administrative head of the Oregon Judicial Department from January 2006 to May 2012. He is the first Hispanic Chief Justice in the history of the Oregon Supreme Court. Justice De Muniz speaks frequently to both national and international audiences on the importance of maintaining independent state judiciaries, improving state court administration and the need for adequate state court funding.
In 2010 Justice De Muniz addressed judicial leaders from 55 countries at the Asian Pacific Courts Conference on the ways and means of judicial branch strategic planning. Later that year, he gave the 17th annual Justice William Brennan Lecture on State Courts and Social Justice at New York University Law School, discussing the need for reengineering state court operations.
See: www.willamette.edu