Manifesting Justice, Valena Beety
Manifesting Justice, Valena Beety
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Manifesting Justice
Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights

Author: Valena Beety, Koa Beck

Narrator: Raechel Wong

Unabridged: 12 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Kalorama

Published: 07/19/2022


Synopsis

When Valena Beety first became a federal prosecutor, her goal was to protect victims, especially women, from cycles of violence. What she discovered was that not only did prosecutions often fail to help victims, they frequently relied on false information, forensic fraud, and police and prosecutor misconduct.

Seeking change, Beety began working in the Innocence Movement, helping to free factually innocent people through DNA testing and criminal justice reform. Manifesting Justice focuses on the shocking story of Beety's client Leigh Stubbs—a young, queer woman in Mississippi, convicted of a horrific crime she did not commit because of her sexual orientation. Beety weaves Stubbs's harrowing narrative through the broader story of a broken criminal justice system.

Drawing on interviews with both innocence advocates and wrongfully convicted women, along with Beety's own experiences as an expert litigator and a queer woman, Manifesting Justice provides a unique outsider/insider perspective. Beety expands our notion of justice to include not just people who are factually innocent, but those who are over-charged, pressured into bad plea deals, and over-sentenced. The result is a riveting and timely book that will transform our very ideas of crime and punishment, what innocence is, and who should be free.

About Valena Beety

Valena Beety is a former federal prosecutor and innocence litigator who represented Leigh Stubbs in post-conviction. She has successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenders, served as an elected board member of the national Innocence Network, and was appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor's Indigent Defense Commission. She is currently a 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 at the law school that connects research with policy reform. Previously, she founded and directed the West Virginia Innocence Project at the West Virginia University College of Law and practiced as a Senior Staff Attorney at the Mississippi Innocence Project, representing clients on death row.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sam on May 14, 2022

Manifesting Justice follows the story of two women's innocence and horrifying wrongful conviction. Along the way, Beety addresses similar cases and laws that used junk science, racial bias, gender bias, class bias, and more to wrongly convict innocent individuals. I did not realize how little I unde......more

Goodreads review by Dallas on May 16, 2022

You all know how much I love books about the criminal justice system, so when I saw Manifesting Justice was written by Valena Beety, the founder and former Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project, I knew it was a “must read”. I have so many thoughts that I’m not sure where to begin, but above......more

Goodreads review by Rose on July 12, 2023

Such an informative and enlightening read! The author is honest, forthcoming, and provides concrete steps to prevent and rectify wrongful convictions, all interwoven with her personal experiences as an innocence litigator and the heart-wrenching stories of her clients.......more

Goodreads review by Judith on July 15, 2022

This was a very difficult book to read and yet should be read. I was simultaneously horrified, appalled, infuriated and saddened by our not so great criminal justice (or lack thereof) system.......more

Goodreads review by Jacqueline on September 26, 2022

This is a must read for everyone! Valena narrates a compelling case of manifest injustice – and the path to actual justice – for two incarcerated women convicted of a crime based on bias, discrimination, and false testimony. This narration is told between socially conscious chapters that edify the r......more