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About Valeri

Valeri Haughton is a lawyer, counselor, administrator, wife, mother, grandmother- and above all - a strong woman committed to a fair legal system for everyone. With a breadth of professional and personal experience, she has devoted time and attention to ensuring that the voices of all citizens are heard.

Valeri has deep Midwestern roots. Her father was an economist and her mother was a registered nurse. She has two younger brothers. When Valeri was 17, she and her brothers went to Panama with her father, a member of the diplomatic corps of USAID -a division of the State Department. While living in Panama City, Valeri attended school in the Canal Zone and became proficient in Spanish.

A graduate of the University of Iowa, she majored in political science and sociology and earned a certificate in women's studies. During and after college, she was choreographer and later Executive Director for the Black Genesis Troupe, managing the company's twenty African/jazz dancers and production crew.

For twenty years, Valeri was a counselor to a variety of constituents. She worked with mentally disturbed and violent offenders for the State Department of Corrections. She served as Assistant Director of an adult day program where she not only administered the daily operations of the agency but also coordinated volunteers and supervised adult learning activities with the local senior center. At Independent Living, Inc., an Area 10 agency, she advocated for the developmentally disabled. These experiences are the foundation of Valeri's concerns that all voices are heard in the judicial system.

At the age of 40, divorced and raising a son and two daughters, Valeri enrolled in the University of Iowa College of Law. She juggled school, single parenthood, and support of her children through scholarships, grants, loans and work while focusing on her lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer.

Valeri has worked diligently in the Indiana criminal justice system for over fourteen years. During law school, she had an externship in the Indiana State Public Defender’s Office- Capital Division, serving as an investigator and law clerk. After completing her law degree, Valeri was a deputy prosecuting attorney in Marion County. In 1997 she terminated her daily commute to Indianapolis by being sworn in as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Monroe County. She was a felony deputy there until leaving the Prosecutor’s office in 2005. Valeri worked as a consultant for IU in the Office of the Vice President for Institutional Development in Bloomington. She researched the history of Blacks and minorities at the university. Currently, she is a deputy public defender for Monroe County. She also serves as judge pro tempore for the Monroe County Circuit Court.

A great deal of Valeri's energy is focused on supporting the Monroe County community and its justice system. She is a member of the Monroe County Bar Association. Valeri volunteered her time as an attorney for the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program. She has volunteered in the Bloomington Protective Order Project, helping to secure citizens' emergency protective orders against domestic abusers. She regularly serves as a judge for IU Law School's Moot Court and first-year oral arguments competitions. The IU Police Department regularly invites her to train cadets in preparation for giving testimony in court appearances. She has also been a trainer for Monroe County Auxiliary Police.

Social justice and strengthening her community are vitally important to Valeri. She sits on the Youth Services Board, the Community Kitchen Board, Cardinal Stage Company Board, and the Monroe County Sheriff's Merit Board. She is the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission. She is a member of the NAACP, Rotary International, University Club of Indiana University and the Farm Bureau. She actively supports Big Brothers/Big Sisters and has served as a mentor for IU's Faculty and Staff for Student Excellence (FASE) program. She also sits on the board of the Blue Ridge Neighborhood Association.

Valeri and her husband, Frank Motley, an Associate Vice Chancellor at Indiana University, met in Bloomington in 1989, and the two married in 1990. Together, they have a blended family of five children and 18 grandchildren.

Valeri Haughton

When asked about her personal philosophy and what she will do when elected judge, Valeri stated:

"As Ralph Ellison pointed out years ago, invisibility is the cruelest of punishments. Many in our community feel left out, ignored, benignly neglected. No one should be invisible when they are in a court of American justice. I have been one of those 'invisible' earlier in my life and I have worked with those that society often forces into invisibility because it does not want to notice them. I will not allow anyone who appears before me to be unseen, unheard, or ignored. Those who administer justice must be able to see past a person's gender, or skin color, or the balance in his or her bank account … to see the whole person and to administer justice even-handedly. My life, my experiences, my dreams for my children and grandchildren, for our community-all ensure that I will be that type of judge."


Primary Election Date: May 6, 2008
General Election Date: November 4, 2008

Paid for by the Valeri Haughton for Judge Committee
Treasurer: Barbara McKinney
P.O. Box 452, Bloomington, IN 47402-0452

valerihaughton@valerihaughton.com