Professor Valena Elizabeth Beety is professor of law at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the deputy director of the Academy for Justice, a criminal justice center connecting research with policy reform. Previously, Beety served as a law professor and the founding director of the West Virginia Innocence Project at the West Virginia University College of Law. 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, the opioid crisis and incarceration. She is the co-author of the Wrongful Convictions Reader (2018), and the author of Manifesting Justice, Wrongly Convicted Women ReClaim Their Rights which forthcoming in June 2022. Professor 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.
At West Virginia University, Beety created and was the inaugural director of the first Forensic Justice LL.M. degree program in the United States, and a founding member of the Appalachian Justice Initiative. She received the WVU College of Law Faculty Scholarship Award in 2016 and her scholarship is published widely, most notably in the Northwestern Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Washington Law Review and the Florida Law Review. Before serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, 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. Beety holds a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Follow Beety @valenabeety.
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Arizona State University -
The Texas courts have spared Melissa Lucio’s life. Now she can prove her innocence.
USA Today [April 22, 2022] -
Op-ed: We all lose if Brittney Griner is left to languish in a Russian prison
AZ Central [March 14, 2022] -
Op-ed: Transforming wrongful convictions
ASU News [March 24, 2022] -
The rise and fall of Winnebago County District Attorney Joe Paulus reveals the immense power of prosecutors – and how it can be abused
Wisconsin Watch [April 2022] -
Brittney Griner’s celebrity also makes her a ‘valuable political pawn’
Texas Standard [March 22, 2022] -
Phoenix Mercury's Brittney Griner to be detained in Russia until May: report
Fox 6 [March 18, 2022] -
A new “Free Brittney” campaign is growing over a WNBA player’s Russian detention
Quartz [March 17, 2022] -
Was Melissa Lucio interrogated and coerced into confessing to something she didn’t do?
Houston Public Media [April 26, 2022] -
Black Man Wins New Trial Over Confederate Memorabilia in Jury Room
The New York Times [December 4, 2021] -
Discovery of ‘Bulk Marijuana’ Preceded Tucson Train Shooting, U.S. Says
The New York Times [October 6, 2021] -
Traumatized witnesses and victims of police violence get shut out of compensation funds
USA Today (oped) [May 4, 2021] -
Innocence Fears Raised in High-Court Case Claiming Bad Lawyering
Bloomberg Law [December 8, 2021] -
Are Victims of Police Shootings Entitled to Crime Victims’ Compensation?
The Crime Report [August 23, 2021] -
The intersection of drug law and racial justice
The State Press [November 19, 2020] -
Beety et al. on Drug-Induced Homicide
CrimProf Blog [November 19, 2018] -
Professor Beety Co-edits New Wrongful Convictions Reader
West Virginia University College of Law [November 19, 2018] -
Valena E. Beety on the Overdose/Homicide Epidemic
[October 3, 2018] -
Prison Labor is Modern Slavery
The Globe Post [September 6, 2018] -
The Overdose/Homicide Epidemic
Georgia State University Law Review [August 15, 2018] -
The Overdose/Homicide Epidemic
34 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 983 [May 10, 2018] -
Forensics: An Incredible Tool But Still Faulty
Comcast Newsmakers [May 10, 2018] -
Helping Prove Innocence Of Wrongly Accused
Comcast Newsmakers [May 9, 2018] -
Professor Valena Beety Featured as Eyewitness Identification Expert on the Undisclosed Podcast
Clinical Law Prof Blog [March 31, 2018] -
State v. Ronnie Long – Addendum 1 – Projecting Innocence
The Undisclosed Podcast [March 15, 2018] -
The Wrongful Convictions Reader
Carolina Academic Press [2018] -
After Ferguson, what can we do?
The Charleston Gazette [November 30, 2014] -
Protecting West Virginia's Innocent
The West Virginia Lawyer [December 2013] -
Buffey Case Shows W.Va. Must Record Police Interrogations
The Charleston Gazette [December 20, 2012] -
The Cost of Death
Jackson Free Press [July 10, 2014]