Victor L. Streib was born in 1941 in Marion, Indiana. He received his undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University in 1966 and then served in the Air Force. He studied law at Indiana University and received his J.D. in 1970. That same year, he joined the Indiana Bar Association, and later the U.S. Supreme Court Bar Association in 1987. He began his teaching career in 1971 at Indiana University's Department of Forensic Studies (now Criminal Justice.) He taught as a law professor at the New England School of Law, the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, and in 1996 became Dean of the Claude W. Pettit College of Law at Ohio Northern University, retiring from that position in 2012.

In the course of his academic career, Streib authored over 300 articles, papers, books and chapters. His research on juveniles and women who were sentenced to death has been cited dozens of times in United States Supreme Court cases. One of Streib's books, The Fairer Death, has shed light on the biases against women in capital cases, concluding that capital punishment is arbitrarily applied and not necessarily for the most heinous crimes. In addition to writing specifically about women and juveniles in death penalty cases, he has argued that factors such as race, mental deficiency, poor legal representation, and defendants who do not conform to gender expectations have more impact on who is sentenced to death than the facts of the crime.

In addition to his scholarly work, Streib has served as counsel and co-counsel on capital cases, including notable cases he has argued in front of the United States Supreme Court. These landmark cases include his service as appellate counsel for the 1988 case Thompson v. Oklahoma , which resulted in the Court's decision to prohibit executing persons who were under sixteen at the time of their crime. He also served as counsel for Roper v. Simmons , the 2005 Supreme Court ruling that decided executing persons younger than age eighteen at the time of their crime is a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and therefore unconstitutional.

As a conscientious objector, Streib has worked to change the culture of violence in America, especially the way that the death penalty's focus has been on vengeance rather than rehabilitation. His writing is objective and measured, and his research on the inconsistencies of capital punishment has protected an unknown number of juveniles from being sentenced to death since 2005. Much of Streibs scholarship has been aided by Watt Espys collection of death penalty files, and Streib has stated that his work is credited to "standing on the shoulders of Watt Espy." Some of Streibs papers were co-authored with his wife, Dr. Lynn Sametz. They have now retired to North Carolina, where they live with their pets, Charles Duke of Ada (a dog), Pywacket (a cat), Atticus (a cat), and Scout (a dog).