On Everyday Injustice Episode 336, host David Greenwald speaks with Valena Beety, a nationally recognized wrongful convictions litigator, former federal prosecutor and law professor, about how stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality can contribute to innocent people being convicted and imprisoned. Beety, who has spent roughly 15 years representing people challenging wrongful convictions, explains how her own experience as a prosecutor led her to question whether the criminal legal system consistently protects victims, survivors or public safety.
Beety focuses on the intersection between wrongful convictions and the criminalization of women and LGBTQ+ people. She argues that prosecutors can exploit longstanding stereotypes portraying queer people as dangerous, deceptive or deviant, particularly when those assumptions are combined with faulty forensic evidence or tunnel vision about who committed a crime. Beety points to cases in which women and queer defendants were prosecuted even when she argues no underlying crime occurred, illustrating how identity can become part of the prosecution’s theory of guilt.
The conversation also explores Beety’s new book, “Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity,” which examines what she describes as an accelerating criminalization of women and queer people following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Beety discusses women investigated following miscarriages, stillbirths or suspected abortions, along with the treatment of pregnant women behind bars and transgender people in prison. She describes inadequate medical care for incarcerated pregnant women, women giving birth without timely assistance and transgender prisoners being placed in prolonged segregation rather than housed in environments appropriate to their circumstances.
Beety also discusses cases involving discredited forensic evidence, including bite-mark testimony, and her earlier book, “Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights.” Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes that proving innocence does not necessarily mean someone will quickly — or ever — leave prison, noting that reversing an existing conviction can be substantially more difficult than obtaining one. Despite those barriers, Beety ends on a measure of optimism, arguing that recognizing how women, pregnant people and LGBTQ+ people can be targeted through stereotypes may create common ground for challenging wrongful convictions and broader abuses within the criminal legal system.
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