- Email:
- vebeety@iu.edu
- Phone:
- (812) 855-3844
- Location:
- Baier Hall 314
Education
- University of Chicago Law School JD
- University of Chicago BA
Biography
Valena Elizabeth Beety is a law professor, an innocence litigator, and a former federal prosecutor. Beety served as the Founding Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project, at West Virginia University College of Law, and the Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice, at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, and Founding Board Member of the Indiana Innocence Project. She has successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses, served as an elected board member of the national Innocence Network, and served as an Appointed Commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission.
Beety’s experiences as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as an innocence litigator in Mississippi and West Virginia, shape her research and writing on wrongful convictions, forensic evidence, prosecution, and incarceration. She is the co-editor of The Wrongful Convictions Reader (Carolina Academic Press, 2nd ed., 2023) (with Russell Covey), and author of the award-winning book Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights (Kensington Books, 2022). She is also a co-author of the treatise Scientific Evidence (LexisNexis 6th Ed. 2022) (with Paul C. Giannelli, Edward J. Imwinkelried, Jane Campbell Moriarty, Andrea Roth, & Jennifer Oliva) and the litigation guide Miscarriages of Justice: Litigating Beyond Factual Innocence (Academy for Justice, 2023) (with Karen Newirth & Karen Thompson).
Her scholarship has been published by or is forthcoming in, among other publications, the UCLA Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Florida Law Review, and online companions to the University of Chicago Law Review, New York University Law Review, and Emory Law Journal. Her scholarship on faulty forensic evidence and wrongful convictions has been cited by judges, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her forthcoming book Pink Crime: Fighting the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity (The New Press, forthcoming 2026) uses the examples of innocent women who have spent decades in prison for "no crime convictions" and the strategic use of criminal law to limit the bodily autonomy of and criminalize pregnant women, new mothers, and queer people to argue that the criminal treatment of the most vulnerable endangers the rights of everyone.
Beety has earned awards for her scholarship, teaching, and service. She was awarded the Indiana University Trustees’ Teaching Award (2025), the West Virginia University College of Law Significant Scholarship Award (2016), the West Virginia Law Review Faculty Member of the Year Award (2016), and the West Virginia Public Defender Services John A. “Jack” Rogers Award for Outstanding Leadership in Public Service, awarded to West Virginia Innocence Project (2019). She has worked on multiple grants funded by the National Institute of Justice, the National Science Foundation, and the American Arbitration Association.
Beety clerked for the Honorable Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and for the Honorable Chief Judge James G. Carr of the Northern District of Ohio. She was born and raised in Indianapolis.
In the Media
- Mentioned in "Exposing the Stereotypes Fueling Reproductive Wrongful Convictions," Gender and the Law Blog (3/21/2025)
- Quoted in "Death Row Case Offers Window Into Prosecutors' Gender Bias," Law 360 (2/21/2025)
- Quoted in "New data could hold problem Indiana police officers accountable," Mirror Indy (1/15/2025)
- Quoted in "Indiana Innocence Project seeks to exonerate wrongly convicted Hoosiers," Indiana Daily Student (11/13/2024)
- Quoted in "Innocence Project seeks to support wrongfully convicted Hoosiers," The Indiana Lawyer (9/11/2024)
- Co-wrote "Why has Brenda Andrew been on death row for two decades? It has everything to do with sex.," Oklahoman (7/13/2023)
Areas of expertise
- Criminal law
- Criminal procedure
- Evidence
- LGBT issues
- Women's issues