Wrongful conviction studies spur an Anteater-produced podcast
When Claudine Mekhail arrived at UC Irvine as a transfer student from Irvine Valley College in the Fall 2023 quarter, she had no idea she would be hosting a podcast—let alone one recorded from cozy campus confines. But as Mekhail prepares to graduate as a double major in criminology, law & society and psychological science next week, she can list on her C.V. having created Beyond the Verdict, a podcast whose inaugural episode is now available on Spotify, with several more installments in the can for release this summer.
“One of my biggest fears about committing to UCI, despite it being my dream school, is that there is such a large student population that I wouldn’t be able to get involved or leave a mark, which is always a priority of mine,” Mekhail says. “I tend to find a way to get involved everywhere I go and can’t thrive in an environment where I’m unable to roll up my sleeves and get to work.”
She credits the podcast’s formation to getting to work at the National Registry of Exonerations. She became aware of the NRE through her Winter 2024 quarter Miscarriages of Justice course taught by criminology, law & society Professor Simon Cole, the Registry’s former director and now editor.
For the Spring quarter that followed, Mekhail was chosen to be among a select few Field Study students placed with the NRE under Cole’s direct supervision. She and her fellow NRE Field Study Anteaters formed the Beyond the Verdict student organization as a UC Irvine Campus Group in Fall 2024.
“One of the first things I appreciated about the School of Social Ecology was the opportunity to apply the concepts we learned in class; that’s what the Field Study offered, and it was a highlight of my time at UCI,” Mekhail says. “I was on a campus where my ideas were nourished and encouraged, both by a system receptive to a first-generation student who was unfamiliar with the process of starting a student organization and by the provision of resources to help get it off the ground and succeed.”
She is quick to add that Maytheli Sharma and Felicia Klijian — two of her fellow Field Study classmates who will also be graduating this month with double majors in CLS and psychological science — were instrumental in founding the Beyond the Verdict student organization.
“When I first approached them, the organization was just an idea,” Mekhail says. “We put in countless hours of work to get to where it is today; the struggle of being a full-time student and running a student organization is immense, and so knowing that if I needed help, they were there to carry it and vice versa was crucial to my success personally and the organization’s success.”
While nurturing the organization and researching cases, it occurred to her that the wrongful conviction cases she was studying were often overlooked in mainstream culture.
“By that point, it had been ingrained in me that I have a responsibility to give back to the community due to the education I am receiving,” says Mekhail. “I was searching for a way to make this information more accessible and to bridge the gap between academia, the public, and the criminal justice system. This was particularly important to me because, prior to graduation, I did not feel that there was a way for me to act on the conviction and passion instilled in me through my coursework.”
She reasoned a podcast with each episode focusing on a wrongfully convicted person would be a way that even a college student could make an impact on society. So, Mekhail approached Cole with the idea, and her mentor not only supported the idea, but he also provided resources to make the podcast a reality.
“The other members of my group and I then began to workshop an episode with the help of Professor Cole’s feedback,” she explains, noting that they first zeroed in on the wrongful conviction and exoneration of Joseph Zamora. The Washington state man was convicted of two counts of assault on a police officer and spent 22 months incarcerated before his conviction was overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct and false statements by police. Zamora’s case was among those Mekhail and her classmates researched during their Field Study placement.
For the podcast, students within the Beyond the Verdict organization were pulled in to employ their unique talents and the ANTrepreneur Center studio was secured for recording, culminating in the first episode’s release in April. Mekhail reports that the first completed season of Beyond the Verdict is scheduled to be up on Spotify by this Fall.
“One of our priorities, and part of the vision of Beyond the Verdict, is that it is a student-run initiative; the podcast will remain at UCI, led by an ever-changing board of Anteater students,” says the graduating senior.
Next year’s Beyond the Verdict board will be led by Mariam Farag (political science and literary journalism major) as president and Sarah Atia (psychological science major) as vice president. During the 2025-26 school year, the student organization will work on producing the podcast’s second season, with the “ultimate goal being to provide a space for students to get involved and apply course skills and concepts,” according to Mekhail.
After graduation, she will be taking some time off to pursue professional opportunities before applying to law school. But to help ensure that Beyond the Verdict continues to thrive without her, she is serving as a learning assistant for the Field Study placement with the NRE this quarter, as part of the Certified Learning Assistant Program.
Once again, it’s a role that puts her under Professor Cole’s supervision.
“I would be remiss if I did not express my immense gratitude to Professor Simon Cole, who not only supported me as the faculty advisor of this organization but also the rest of the board throughout the process of developing this student organization and managing it,” Mekhail says. “He created an environment in his classes where I was comfortable to not only receive information but build on it and to speak up with my ideas. His guidance as a professor and faculty mentor has been a pivotal part of my experience at UCI, not just in this organization but throughout my time as a student at UCI.”
The professor returns the compliment.
“Claudine showed amazing initiative when she co-founded a podcast devoted to wrongful conviction stories and other criminal justice issues,” Cole says. “Her leadership on that venture was consistent with her leadership in the teamwork portion of my class. That initiative was just the kind of inspiration I was hoping to see when I started teaching the course.”
– Matt Coker