Valena Elizabeth Beety

Education

• B.A., University of Chicago, 2002
• J.D., University of Chicago Law School, 2006

Awards and Achievements

• West Virginia University College of Law Faculty Significant Scholarship Award, 2015–2016
• West Virginia Law Review Professor of the Year, 2016
• Big XII Faculty Fellow, University of Texas School of Law, 2013
• BLSA Faculty Member of the Year, University of Mississippi College of Law, 2012

Biography

Valena Elizabeth Beety is Professor of Law and Founding Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project at the West Virginia University College of Law. Her teaching and scholarship focus on criminal procedure, wrongful convictions, forensic justice, and incarceration. Her professional experience includes serving as a federal prosecutor and as a senior staff attorney with the Mississippi Innocence Project.

Professor Beety clerked for Chief Judge James G. Carr of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia before transitioning to innocence litigation and reform work.

At WVU, she launched the LL.M. in Forensic Justice—the first of its kind—and founded the Franklin D. Cleckley Fellowship in partnership with the University of Chicago Law School. She is also a founding member of the Appalachian Justice Initiative at WVU Law.

Professor Beety serves nationally as an elected board member of the Innocence Network and on the Executive Board of the Research Center on Violence. She is also an appointed member of West Virginia’s Indigent Defense Commission and a member of the N.D.W.V. Federal Drug Court Team. Her publications appear in top law reviews including the Northwestern University Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, and Florida Law Review. She is co-author of The Wrongful Convictions Reader (Carolina Academic Press, 2018).

Publications, Research, and Intellectual Contributions

• Regulating Bite Mark Evidence: Lesbian Vampires and Other Myths of Forensic Odontology, 94 Wash. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2019)
• Will the Federal Government Enforce the Fourteenth Amendment?, ABA Insights on Law & Society (Spring 2017)
• Race to Death: A Critical Look at the Death Penalty as Arkansas Executes Eight, JURIST (2017)
• Prosecuting Opioid Use, Punishing Rurality, Ohio St. L.J. (forthcoming 2019)
• Evidence on Fire, 97 North Carolina L. Rev. (forthcoming 2019)
• The Overdose/Homicide Epidemic, Ga. State U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2018)
• The Wrongful Convictions Reader, Carolina Academic Press (2018) (co-authored with Russell Covey)
• Discovering Forensic Fraud, 112 Northwestern U. L. Rev. 124 (2017)
• Changing the Culture of Disclosure and Forensics, 73 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. Online 580 (2017)
• Voices on Innocence, 68 Fla. L. Rev. 1569 (2017)
• Introduction to the West Virginia Law Review Flawed Forensics and Innocence Symposium, 119 W. Va. L. Rev. 101 (2016)
• Cops in Lab Coats: Forensics in the Courtroom, 13 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 543 (2016)
• Contemporary Perspectives on Wrongful Conviction: 2016 Innocence Network Conference, 45 Hofstra L. Rev. 2 (2016)
• Identifying the Culprit in Wrongful Convictions, 82 Tenn. L. Rev. 975 (2015)
• Judicial Dismissal in the Interest of Justice, 80 Missouri L. Rev. 629 (2015)
• 2015 Innocence Network Conference: Introduction, 3 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 179 (2015)
• Emergence from Civil Death: The Evolution of Expungement in West Virginia, 117 W. Va. L. Rev. Online 63 (2015)
• Protecting West Virginia’s Innocent, The West Virginia Lawyer (Dec. 2013)
• The Case of Trayvon Martin and the Need for Eyewitness Identification Reform, 90 Denver U. L. Rev. 331 (2013)
• Risk and Execution: The Local Impact of Capital Cases on Mississippi Counties, 82 Miss. L. J. 133 (2013)
• Ethics and Economics: The Death Penalty in Mississippi, 81 Miss. L. J. 1437 (2012)
• Mississippi Initiative 26: Personhood and Criminalization, 81 Miss. L. J. Supra 55 (2011)
• Reframing Asylum Standards for Mutilated Women, 11 J. Gender Race & Just. 239 (2008)

Appointments

• Executive Board Member, Innocence Network
• Board Member, Research Center on Violence
• Member, Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission, State of West Virginia
• Member, Federal Drug Court Team, N.D.W.V.

Teaching Experience

• Professor of Law, West Virginia University College of Law, 2012–Present
• Visiting Scholar, University of Colorado Law School, Spring 2015
• Big XII Faculty Fellow, University of Texas School of Law, October 2013
• Adjunct Professor, University of Mississippi School of Law, 2010–2012

Professional Experience

• Senior Staff Attorney, Mississippi Innocence Project, 2009–2012
• Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, 2008–2009
• Law Clerk, Hon. Martha Craig Daughtrey, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 2007–2008
• Law Clerk, Chief Judge James G. Carr, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, 2006–2007