University of Georgia
School of Law
205 Hirsch Hall
Athens, GA 30602
United States
B.S., University of Michigan
J.D., Ph.D., Northwestern University
Evidence
Criminal Law
John B. Meixner Jr. joined the University of Georgia School of Law faculty in 2022 teaching classes in evidence and criminal law.
Meixner’s research focuses on criminal law (especially sentencing), evidence, and the intersection of law and neuroscience. He is currently working on a long-term empirical project examining how mitigating facts about criminal defendants’ backgrounds impact judges’ sentencing decisions and prosecutors’ charging and plea-bargaining decisions. Other current projects focus on how judges understand and interpret statistical and technical evidence, and the relationship between neuroscience and the law. He is also a member of the Systematic Content Analysis of Litigation Events (SCALES) project, working to develop tools to allow large-scale analysis of criminal court records. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Northwestern University Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Wisconsin Law Review, DePaul Law Review, Albany Law Review, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Psychological Science, Journal of Law and the Biosciences and NeuroImage, among other outlets. He has also been interviewed and featured in numerous mainstream outlets, including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Time, CNN, NBC News, NBC 11 Alive and CBS Atlanta News Now.
Before entering academia, Meixner served as an assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan for almost six years, working in the major crimes unit and the appellate division. He led over 100 grand jury investigations, briefed and argued dozens of appeals and first-chaired multiple jury trials. He also worked closely with the office’s “Restart” program, designed to provide alternatives to incarceration and make criminal justice more equitable. Before working as a federal prosecutor, he was a general litigation associate in Schiff Hardin’s Ann Arbor office. Immediately after law school, he served as a judicial clerk for Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Chief Judge Gerald E. Rosen of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
He earned his bachelor’s degree with highest honors and distinction from the University of Michigan in 2006 and his J.D. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2013. He graduated magna cum laude from the School of Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Northwestern University Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif.
ARTICLES
Shocking Sentences, 100 Indiana L.J. ___ (forthcoming 2024).
Modern Sentencing Mitigation, 116 Nw. Univ. L. Rev. 1395 (2022).
Neuroscience and Mental Competency: Current Uses and Future Potential, 81 Albany L. Rev. 995 (2018).
The Difficulty of Discerning the Effect of Neuroscience: a Peer Commentary of Shen et al. 2018, 5 J.L. & Biosciences 208 (2018).
The Use of Neuroscience Evidence in Criminal Proceedings, 3 J.L. & Biosciences 330 (2016).
An Empirical Research Agenda for the Forensic Sciences, 106 J. Criminal L. & Criminology1 (with Jonathan J. Koehler) (2016).
Applications of Neuroscience in Criminal Law: Legal and Methodological Issues, 15 Current Neurology & Neurosci. Rep. 513 (2015).
The Hidden Daubert Factor: How Judges Use Error Rates in Assessing Scientific Evidence, 2014 Wis. L. Rev. 1063 (with Shari Seidman Diamond) (2014).
Detecting Knowledge of Incidentally Acquired, Real-World Memories Using a P300-Based Concealed Information Test, 25 Psych. Sci. 1994 (with J. Peter Rosenfeld) (2014).
Does Criminal Diversion Contribute to the Vanishing Civil Trial?, 62 DePaul L. Rev. 443 (with Shari Seidman Diamond) (2013) (invited symposium contribution).
Review of Recent Studies and Issues Regarding the P300-Based Complex Trial Protocol for Detection of Concealed Information, 90 Int'l J. Psychophysiology 118 (with J. Peter Rosenfeld, Xiaoqing Hu, Elena Labovsky, & Michael R. Winograd) (2013).
P900: a Putative Novel ERP Component in Response to the Signal to a Participant That "No Specific Responses are Needed on this Trial!," 38 Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback 121 (with J. Peter Rosenfeld, Elena Labkovsky, Michael Winograd, Alexander Sokolovsky, Jeff Weisharr, & Tim Ullman) (2013).
Liar, Liar, Jury's the Trier? The Future of Neuroscience-Based Credibility Assessment and the Court, 106 Nw. Univ. L. Rev. 1451 (note) (2012).
Damage Anchors on Real Juries, 8 J. Empirical Legal Stud.148 (with Shari Seidman Diamond, Mary R. Rose, & Beth Murphy) (2011).
A Novel Countermeasure Against the Reaction Time Index of Countermeasure Use in the P300-Based Complex Trial Protocol for Detection of Concealed Information, 81 Int'l J. Psychophysiology 60 (with Alexander Sokolovsky, Jessica Rothenberg, Elena Labkovsky, & J. Peter Rosenfeld) (2011).
A Mock Terrorism Application of the P300-Based Concealed Information Test, 48 Psychophysiology 149 (with J. Peter Rosenfeld) (2011) (discussed in Joshua Dressler & Stephen Garvey, Criminal Law Cases & Materials 135 (9th ed. 2022).
Lying in the Scanner: Covert Countermeasures Disrupt Deception Detection by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 55 NeuroImage 312 (with Giorgio Ganis, J. Peter Rosenfeld, Rogier A. Kievit, & Haline E. Schendan) (2011).
Countermeasure Mechanisms in a P300-Based Concealed Information Test, 47 Psychophysiology 57 (with J. Peter Rosenfeld) (2010).
Assigned Versus Random, Countermeasure-Like Responses in the P300-Based Complex Trial Protocol for Detection of Deception Task Demand Effects, 34 Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback 209 (with Alexander Haynes, Michael R. Winograd, Jordan Brown, & J. Peter Rosenfeld) (2009).
The Effects of Asymmetric vs. Symmetric Probability of Targets Following Probe and Irrelevant Stimuli in the Complex Trial Protocol for Detection of Concealed Information with P300, 98 Physiology & Behavior 10 (with J. Peter Rosenfeld, Monica Tang, Michael Winograd, & Elena Labkovsky) (2009).
BOOK CHAPTERS
Admissibility and Constitutional Issues of the Concealed Information Test in American Courts: An Update, in Detecting Concealed Information and Deception: Recent Updates 405 (J. Peter Rosenfeld ed., 2018).
Jury Simulation Goals, in The Psychology of Juries: Current Knowledge and a Research Agenda for the Future (with Jonathan J. Koehler) (2017).
Decision Making and the Law: Truth Barriers, in, The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making (with Jonathan J. Koehler) (2016).