About
Valena Elizabeth Beety is a law professor, innocence litigator, and former federal prosecutor who has exonerated the wrongfully convicted, secured presidential clemency, and produced scholarship cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her work centers the women and queer people most targeted in the criminal legal system.
Professor Beety is the Robert McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and a Board Member of the Indiana Innocence Project. She founded the West Virginia Innocence Project at West Virginia University College of Law and was Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. She served as an elected member of the national Innocence Network board and as an Appointed Commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission.
Throughout her career, Professor Valena Beety successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients and obtained presidential grants of clemency for people convicted of drug offenses. Her experiences as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as an innocence litigator in Mississippi and West Virginia, shape everything she researches and writes about — from wrongful convictions and forensic evidence to prosecution and incarceration.
Professor Beety is the Robert McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and a Board Member of the Indiana Innocence Project. She founded the West Virginia Innocence Project at West Virginia University College of Law and was Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. She served as an elected member of the national Innocence Network board and as an Appointed Commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission.
Throughout her career, Professor Valena Beety successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients and obtained presidential grants of clemency for people convicted of drug offenses. Her experiences as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as an innocence litigator in Mississippi and West Virginia, shape everything she researches and writes about — from wrongful convictions and forensic evidence to prosecution and incarceration.
Her award-winning book, Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, tells the stories of women who fought back against a system that wrongfully convicted them. She’s also the co-editor of The Wrongful Convictions Reader.
Her forthcoming book, Pink Crime: Fighting the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity (The New Press, 2026), examines how the criminal legal system targets pregnant women, new mothers, and queer people — and explains how when your identity is the crime, innocence is no defense.
Her forthcoming book, Pink Crime: Fighting the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity (The New Press, 2026), examines how the criminal legal system targets pregnant women, new mothers, and queer people — and explains how when your identity is the crime, innocence is no defense.