Featured on – https://law.asu.edu/newsroom/asu-law-professor-wins-2-prestigious-book-awards
“Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights” by Professor Valena Beety, senior research scholar for the Academy for Justice, won both the Montaigne Medal and the Sarton Nonfiction Award. The Montaigne Medal is awarded to books that provoke thought or progress. The Sarton Nonfiction Award is named for memoirist, novelist and poet May Sarton, and is awarded to stories that honor the lives of women and girls.
“The book identifies the unique ways that women and queer people are vulnerable to wrongful convictions, and it also highlights legal strategies for challenging these wrongful convictions,” she said. “The book’s overarching theme, in line with its name, is how legal claims of manifest injustice, or miscarriages of justice, can free these wrongly convicted individuals.”
Beety said that winning these two awards is meaningful to her scholarship on wrongful convictions and incarceration – especially right now.
“Particularly in light of legislation against transgender men and women, the rise in hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals, and even bomb threats at libraries and bookstores that host Drag Story Hour, ‘Manifesting Justice’ calls out how queer people can be criminalized just for their identities,” she said.
