Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam’s life has been a study in endurance, injustice, and the fragile meaning of freedom. Born in India and brought to the United States as a nine-month-old infant, Vedam spent 43 years in a Pennsylvania prison for a murder he did not commit. When he finally walked out a free man in October 2025—after new evidence exposed the deep flaws and suppression of truth in his case—his relief lasted only minutes. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers immediately detained him under a decades-old deportation order, reviving a shadow that has followed him since his teenage years. Now, at 64, the longest-serving wrongfully convicted man in Pennsylvania’s history faces deportation to a country he has no memory of.
The deportation order dates back to the 1980s, tied to Vedam’s teenage drug conviction for possession and intent to distribute LSD. Though he served time for that offence before being wrongfully charged with murder, the conviction remained on record. Because of it, ICE officials argued that the order was still valid despite his exoneration. To them, Vedam remains a “career criminal.” To his family, he is a victim of a broken system—punished twice over by history and circumstance.
Vedam’s nightmare began in 1982, when he was accused of killing his college roommate, 19-year-old Thomas Kinser, in Centre County, Pennsylvania. Kinser’s body was discovered in a sinkhole with a gunshot wound to the head, but no murder weapon, motive, or witnesses ever tied Vedam to the crime. Prosecutors relied entirely on circumstantial evidence and conjecture, claiming Vedam shot Kinser with a .25-calibre pistol—a weapon that was never recovered. The lack of evidence did not prevent a conviction. In 1983, Vedam was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. His appeals were unsuccessful, and when a retrial was ordered in 1988, the verdict remained the same.
What followed were decades of confinement defined by persistence rather than despair. From behind bars, Vedam pursued education relentlessly. He earned three academic degrees, including an MBA with a perfect 4.0 GPA—the first such achievement in the 150-year history of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. He also developed literacy and mentorship programs for inmates, earning praise from prison administrators and fellow prisoners alike. Yet despite his accomplishments, his parents—who had immigrated with dreams of a better life—died before they could see him free. His mother visited him every week for 34 years until she died in 2016. His father, a respected physics professor, died in 2009, still hoping for his son’s vindication.
The breakthrough came in 2022, when a legal team led by Professor Gopal Balachandran of Penn State University’s Dickinson Law uncovered long-suppressed FBI documents. The hidden evidence included a report and handwritten notes showing that the bullet wound in the victim’s skull was too small to have been caused by the calibre prosecutors claimed. This revelation collapsed the central premise of the prosecution’s case, proving that key exculpatory evidence had been deliberately withheld. In October 2025, a Centre County judge overturned Vedam’s conviction, declaring that if the evidence had been disclosed earlier, the jury likely would have reached a different verdict.
District Attorney Bernie Cantorna dismissed the charges, citing the loss of witnesses and the passage of time, effectively closing the case. On October 3, 2025, Vedam walked out of Huntingdon State Correctional Institution—finally free after 43 years. Yet before he could take a breath as a free man, ICE officials detained him under the reinstated deportation order. He was transferred to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, where he now lives among 60 other detainees in uncertain limbo.
From detention, Vedam sent a message to his family: “My name has been cleared. I am no longer a prisoner—I am a detainee.” His lawyer, Ava Benach, has filed a motion to reopen his immigration case and to stay deportation while the motion is under review. Benach argues that Vedam, who has lived in the U.S. since infancy, deserves to remain in the only country he has ever known. “He was a lawful permanent resident, and his citizenship application had been accepted before his wrongful arrest in 1982,” she said.
Vedam’s family—his sister Saraswathi and niece Zoe Miller-Vedam—continue to fight for his freedom. They warn that deporting him to India would effectively exile him to a foreign land with no support or connections. “He’s been gone for 43 years. The world has changed entirely—technology, society, everything,” said Zoe. “He would not survive without family. All we want is for him to live peacefully with us.”
To them, the deportation is not just another bureaucratic act—it is a continuation of the injustice that has already stolen a lifetime. They have appealed to the immigration court to reopen the case and to recognise that the original order is rooted in an era when Vedam’s very identity as an immigrant was weaponised against him.
For now, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam remains confined once again—exonerated yet restrained, vindicated yet displaced. His case has become a symbol of how legal systems can compound errors rather than correct them. After surviving the walls of a prison cell for four decades, he now faces the invisible walls of an immigration system that refuses to see him as anything other than foreign. His fight for true freedom—freedom not just from bars, but from exile—continues.
