Subramanyam Vedam’s wrongful conviction leads to immigration complications after his release from prison.
A 64-year-old man of Indian origin, Subramanyam Vedam, has recently been detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after being exonerated from a murder charge he faced for 43 years. This unexpected turn of events occurred shortly after he was found innocent on October 2, leading to his release from a Pennsylvania prison. The immigration authority cited a ‘legacy deportation order’ from the 1980s, linked to a previous conviction for drug-related charges when Vedam was just 19 years old.
Subramanyam Vedam arrived in the United States from India in 1962 at the age of nine months. His legal troubles began in 1982 when he was arrested for the murder of his friend, 19-year-old Thomas Kinser. Kinser had been reported missing in December 1980, and his remains were discovered in September 1981, bearing a bullet wound to the skull. Prosecutors alleged that Vedam had used a .25-caliber pistol to shoot Kinser, although the weapon was never recovered.
Despite the absence of concrete evidence, Vedam was convicted twice, in 1983 and again in 1988, receiving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. However, in a significant turn of events in 2022, lawyers from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project unearthed crucial documents, including an FBI report that indicated the bullet wound in Kinser’s skull could not have been caused by a .25-caliber bullet. This evidence led the Centre County Court of Common Pleas to vacate Vedam’s conviction in August 2023. The court stated that had this evidence been available during the original trial, it could have influenced the jury’s decision.
On October 2, the District Attorney announced that charges against Vedam were being dropped and that there would be no pursuit of a new trial. However, as Vedam walked out of prison on October 3, he was taken into custody by ICE due to his past drug conviction, which had remained dormant while he was serving his life sentence. The immigration authority referred to Vedam as a “career criminal” with a history of offenses dating back to 1980 and emphasized his status as a convicted controlled substance trafficker.
Vedam’s legal team, led by attorney Ava Benach, has expressed concern over the immigration proceedings, noting that the case would have likely been resolved much earlier had he not been wrongfully convicted of murder. Benach has argued that deporting Vedam back to India, a country where he has minimal connections, would represent another grave injustice in a life already marked by wrongful imprisonment. As the situation develops, Vedam remains in ICE custody while arrangements for his potential deportation are considered.
