Valena Beety's Pink Crime examines how prosecutors turn pregnancy and queer identity into evidence

Former federal prosecutor Valena Beety’s new book argues that women and queer people are often punished for crimes that never occurred, with miscarriages, infant deaths and other tragedies recast as homicides. Published by The New Press on August 4, 2026, the book connects those cases to fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

Why it matters: - Beety argues that wrongful convictions involving women often start with a deeper problem: prosecutors charging a crime that never happened. - The book links criminal cases involving pregnancy outcomes, motherhood and queer identity to broader legal shifts that can widen what police and prosecutors treat as suspect conduct. - The argument reaches beyond individual cases. It points to how bias, junk science and stereotypes can shape criminal verdicts.

What happened: - Valena Beety published Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity with The New Press on August 4, 2026. - The book examines how miscarriages, sudden infant deaths and unexplained deaths at home are reconstructed by prosecutors as homicides. - Beety says women are often offered to juries as evidence of guilt because of assumptions about motherhood and queer identity. - The book includes an introduction by Christina Swarns, executive director of the Innocence Project. - Beety is a former federal prosecutor, an innocence litigator and the McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington Maurer School of Law. - Beety is a founding board member of the Indiana Innocence Project and previously led the West Virginia Innocence Project. - Her earlier book, Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, won a Gold Medal in Women’s Issues from the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

The details: - Beety says roughly 75% of exonerated women in the U.S. were convicted in cases where no crime occurred. - The book ties that pattern to discredited forensic science, prosecutorial overreach and juror assumptions about how mothers and queer people behave. - One case in the book is Brittney Poolaw, a young Indigenous woman sentenced after a miscarriage that medical evidence attributed to a genetic abnormality while only trace amounts of methamphetamine were detected in her blood. - Another case is the San Antonio Four, whose wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration the book links to homophobia. - The book also discusses Roseberline Turenne, who received a 126-year sentence after photographs of children’s diaper rashes at the daycare where she worked were found on her phone. - Beety argues prosecutors invited jurors to infer sexual interest in children based solely on Turenne’s queerness. - The book examines fetal personhood statutes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. - Beety argues those developments expand the range of ordinary conduct that can be charged. - The book also looks at criminal law used against gender-affirming care, queer families and reproductive decisions.

Between the lines: - The book’s core claim is that criminal justice systems do not just punish conduct; they can also police identity. - Beety’s background as both a former prosecutor and innocence litigator gives the book an insider’s critique of how cases are built. - The cases highlighted suggest a recurring pattern: medical ambiguity or ordinary family life can be turned into criminal suspicion when filtered through bias. - The legal landscape matters because changes in abortion and LGBTQ+ law can give prosecutors more room to frame private decisions as criminal acts.

What's next: - Pink Crime is available now from The New Press. - Beety is available for interviews on wrongful convictions, forensic evidence and the prosecution of pregnancy outcomes. - The book is likely to keep attention on how courts, hospitals and prosecutors handle pregnancy loss, infant deaths and cases involving queer identity. - More information