Today on KPBS Investigates, Aaron Harvey’s journey from wrongful gang charges to UC Berkeley graduation.

In the summer of 2014, a swarm of police arrested Aaron Harvey near where he was living outside Las Vegas. Harvey is from San Diego, and was charged as a test case by San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis using a law that had never been used before.

It said someone could be charged for conspiracy for gang shootings, even if that person had nothing to do with the shootings at all. That was the case for Harvey. He was charged because he was in social media pictures wearing gang colors and making gang signs.

A judge dismissed the charges against him, but not before he spent seven months in jail.

Now, Harvey has done something that when he was in jail seemed like an impossible dream: graduating from UC Berkeley.

This KPBS Investigates episode was reported and written by Claire Trageser. Emily Jankowski is the director of sound design. Kinsee Morlan is Podcast Coordinator. This episode was edited by Megan Burke. Lisa Morissette is operations manager and John Decker is the interim associate general manager of content.

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