Valena Beety

Valena Elizabeth Beety is an innocence litigator, a law professor, and a former federal prosecutor. She is the Robert H. McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, in Bloomington, Indiana. Previously, Beety served as the Founding Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project. Her 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. Valena Beety has successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses, and served as an elected board member of the national Innocence Network, an invited board member of the Research Center on Violence, and an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission. She is the co-editor of the Wrongful Convictions Reader, and author of Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights. She lives in Bloomington with her wife Jennifer Oliva, their dog Eva, and their cat Moonshine.