Subramanyam Vedam, 64, who spent more than four decades in a Pennsylvania prison for charges of murder of his childhood friend was finally set free. However, his freedom did not last long, immediately after stepping out of prison, he was transferred to an ICE detention center by immigration officials. Just as his sister was about to meet him and take him home, he was sent to the ICE detention center. He was taken to federal custody based on a deportation order dating back to 1999. It wasn’t even a week after a judge overturned the 1983 verdict of murder conviction.
What was the murder case?
Vedam, an Indian origin man who was raised in the United States and grew up in Pennsylvania, where his parents worked at Penn State University. Vedam had a childhood friend named Thomas Kinser, both were raised in the University campus, as both their parents were faculty in the University. In December 1980 Kinser was last seen alive with Vedam, the duo was 19 years old then. Nine months later, Kinser’s body was found and Vedam was arrested on charges of murder, despite inconsistencies in the evidence. Vedam was first convicted in 1983 and was again convicted in 1988, after prosecutors highlighted his ethnicity to a jury of all-white jurors. During cross-examination then, the prosecutor asked where was his birthplace, how often did you go back to India, did he ever meditate as a teenager? among other questions. Even though Vedam was convicted, yet he maintained his innocence, only till last year when a professor of Penn State law Gopal Balachandran unearthed some of the reports of FBI ballistics, that clearly stated that the bullet that killed Kinser wasn’t from Vedam’s alleged weapon.
