Sixty-four-year-old Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, an India-born man who spent more than four decades in a United States prison for a murder he always insisted he did not commit, has received a temporary lifeline from the American legal system. Two separate courts have now stayed his deportation, preventing him from being immediately returned to India after he was taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following his release. His case has raised serious questions about prosecutorial conduct, withheld evidence, and the failures of the justice system that kept him imprisoned for 43 long years.
Vedam walked out of a Pennsylvania prison on October 3 after being fully exonerated in the killing of his friend, 19-year-old Thomas Kinser, a crime that took place in 1980. However, instead of finally regaining his freedom, he was immediately detained again—this time by ICE officers seeking to enforce an old deportation order tied to a drug-related conviction from his youth. Despite his murder conviction being overturned, the earlier case for possessing and intending to distribute LSD still stands in the records. ICE argued that a “legacy deportation order” from the 1980s mandated his removal from the country.
In a significant relief for Vedam, an immigration judge put his deportation on hold until the Bureau of Immigration Appeals decides whether to take up his case—a process that could stretch over months. On the same day, a federal district court in Pennsylvania also halted his removal. He currently remains in a Louisiana detention facility equipped with its own airport runway for deportation operations, waiting for the next phase in his struggle for freedom.
Vedam’s journey through the justice system has been long and devastating. Arrested in 1982 over the disappearance and murder of Kinser in Centre County, Pennsylvania, Vedam had been the last known person seen with his friend. With no eyewitnesses, no murder weapon, and no clear motive, prosecutors nevertheless charged him with first-degree murder. They claimed he had shot Kinser with a .25-calibre pistol. He was denied bail because authorities described him as a foreigner at risk of fleeing, and both his passport and Green Card were seized.
Despite the absence of direct evidence, a jury convicted him in 1983, sentencing him to life without parole, along with additional time for the drug case. For decades, he remained behind bars while his family and supporters fought to prove his innocence. His parents died waiting for him to return home. Today, his closest family members are his sister and nieces in the US, who continue to support him and challenge attempts to send him to India.
The turning point came only in 2022 when a legal team led by Professor Gopal Balachandran from Penn State Dickinson Law uncovered crucial evidence that prosecutors had never disclosed at trial. Among the hidden materials was an FBI report and handwritten notes suggesting the bullet wound in Kinser’s skull was too small to match a .25-calibre bullet—undermining the central prosecution claim. Forensic experts later testified in court, confirming that the withheld evidence could have changed the jury’s verdict.
A county judge ruled that the conviction could not stand, emphasizing that the hidden documents would likely have altered the outcome of the trial. Prosecutors eventually dropped all charges, and Vedam became the longest-imprisoned exoneree in Pennsylvania history and one of the longest in the United States.
However, his legal struggle did not end with his release. ICE acted immediately to enforce the decades-old deportation order stemming from his teenage drug case, forcing him into yet another battle to remain in the only country he has known since infancy. His supporters argue that deporting him after 43 years of wrongful incarceration would add another severe injustice on top of the extraordinary punishment he already endured.
Vedam now describes himself not as a prisoner but a “detainee,” still waiting for a chance to live as a free man. While the deportation stay offers temporary protection, his fight for permanent freedom and the right to live with his family in the US continues, even after losing more than forty years to a wrongful conviction.
His story stands as a stark reminder of the human cost of suppressed evidence, institutional failure, and delayed justice—where freedom, once taken, may take a lifetime to regain.
