After more than four decades in state prison for a murder he maintains he did not commit, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam will be released.
Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna said on Thursday that his office will not pursue further prosecution and would file to drop the charges, just over a month after Judge Jonathan Grine overturned the now-64-year-old Vedam’s conviction in the 1980 killing of Thomas Kinser near State College.
After deciding not to appeal Grine’s ruling, Cantorna said it was “not an easy decision” whether or not to push forward with a new trial.
“After 44 years, some of the Commonwealth witnesses are dead. Some of our evidence is no longer available. Witnesses’ memories have faded, and the realities of a new trial 44 years later is made complicated by the passage of time,” Cantorna said during a press conference at the Centre County Courthouse Annex in Bellefonte.
Prosecutors were filing a motion to dismiss the charges against Vedam on Thursday afternoon.
“We applaud District Attorney Cantorna’s decision to both not appeal Judge Grine’s decision and dismiss the case against Subu,” Gopal Balachandran, Vedam’s lead attorney, said later on Thursday. “This is a recognition of Subu’s humanity, his long years in prison for a crime he did not commit and his remarkable record and achievements while incarcerated.”
Neither Cantorna nor Balachandran yet knew the timeline for Vedam’s release from Huntingdon state prison, where he has been incarcerated since his initial conviction in 1983.
Whenever that may occur, his family is looking forward to seeing him free for the first time in decades.
“We’re grateful that District Attorney Cantorna has made this momentous decision,” Vedam’s sister, Saraswathi Vedam, said. “Our family has spent more than four decades living with the anguish over all that we lost when Subu — our cherished son, brother, and uncle — was wrongfully vilified and banished to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. While nothing can restore or fill the void of all of those years we were apart, and the significant milestones we couldn’t celebrate togeth2er, today’s decision by DA Cantorna proves that an unwavering commitment to truth and fairness can propel us through our bleakest moments.”
Vedam, who has been behind bars since his 1981 arrest, was convicted in 1983 and again after a 1988 retrial of fatally shooting Kinser in 1980, when both were 19-year-old State College area residents.
Kinser was last seen by his family on Dec. 14, 1980, when he borrowed his parents’ van to give Vedam a ride.
After Kinser’s body was discovered on Sept. 19, 1981 in a sinkhole at Bear Meadows in Harris Township, prosecutors said Vedam used a .25 caliber handgun to kill his friend. A murder weapon was never recovered, but Vedam’s conviction was based in part on his purchase of a .25 caliber gun, which he said he did not acquire until after Kinser’s death, and a shell casing of the same caliber found under Kinser’s remains.
The DA’s office granted Vedam’s current appeal attorneys access to the full case file in 2021. A handwritten note with the size of the bullet hole in Kinser’s skull, believed to have been written by former Centre County DA Ray Gricar, who prosecuted the 1988 retrial, led them to ultimately gain access to an FBI report that was never presented at trial and that they say would have been critical to Vedam’s defense.
They contend it shows that bullet hole in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been made by a .25., and that the prosecution suppressed data generated by an FBI Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis conducted on a test-fire bullet and one found at the site of Kinser’s remains.
Experts for the defense and prosecution offered competing interpretations of the evidence during a hearing in February. Grine wrote that his decision was not a matter of which expert was correct, but rather what impact the the FBI file would have had if it had been disclosed at trial.
“No amount of due diligence” would have enabled Vedam to obtain the FBI measurements and bullet analysis data for his 1988 trial, Grine wrote, and “there is reasonable probability the jury’s judgment would have been affected” if an FBI agent’s bullet hole measurements had been provided. He added that the report could have been used for the defense to undermine the credibility of the agent who testified the bullet came from a .25 and “severed the link” between Vedam and the crime.
Had Cantorna appealed Grine’s ruling, it would have extended Vedam’s incarceration with little chance of succeeding in state Superior Court, Balachandran said. He added that “there is a long line of cases in Pennsylvania that bar retrial when the prosecutor engages in the type of misconduct Gricar engaged in,” and his team would have sought to have the case dismissed before trial.
“As a result, I believe it made perfect sense for the DA’s office to dismiss on both moral and legal grounds,” Balachandran said.
Cantorna said he remained convinced that a .25 bullet killed Kinser, but that “the fact remains that a trial and probabilities of conviction are negatively affected by the passage of time.
Vedam’s age at the time of the crime and his history in prison, where by all accounts he has been a model inmate, played into the decision to forego further prosecution, Cantorna said. During his time in prison, Vedam has earned three degrees, becoming the first SCI Huntingdon inmate to earn a master’s while incarcerated, created and led a prison literacy training program, led fundraising efforts for Big Brothers Big Sisters and tutored other inmates to help them earn diplomas.
“It is my conclusion that the interests of justice, the interests of the Commonwealth, and the interests of the citizens of Centre County are served by this 44-year prison sentence,” Cantorna said.
Vedam will not be subject to any court supervision upon his release, and Cantorna said he would not have filed to dismiss the charges if he believed Vedam posed any danger.
“There’s no doubt if there were concerns about public safety, this would not have occurred,” he said.
Cantorna spoke to Kinser’s sibling before moving forward with the dismissal of charges, and said that “they appreciated the fact that they were brought into that decision making,” but that “I’m not gonna say they understood it.”
He added that the decision “does not reflect the quality of the State College Police Department’s investigation.” Borough police chief John Gardner, who was in attendance at the press conference, said he agreed with Cantorna’s decision not to pursue a new trial..
“As the DA said, I thoroughly believe that the investigation that was conducted way back when was a good investigation,” Gardner said. “It was a thorough investigation. It was a complete investigation that pointed to Mr. Vedam. But for the reason stated by the district attorney, I’m in complete agreement with his decision to do this because I too agree 44 years is a long time. That might be easy for me to say because I’m not a family member or things like that. But I just know the difficulties of trying to retry this case right now would be almost impossible.”
While Vedam has had supporters who believed for years that he should be set free, the findings of his attorneys starting in 2021, which were detailed along with the case history and Vedam’s background on the FreeSubu.org website, have rallied support from many community members who called for his release. They formed a group who met to discuss the case with Balachandran and others, displayed “Fair Trial for Subu” yard signs and attended court proceedings.
“Today would not have been possible without the heroic and tenacious efforts of Subu’s attorneys, who, like him, refused to concede and shepherded him down the path to justice,” said Saraswathi Vedam. “We also could not have reached this day without the family, friends, and community advocates who stood with Subu through the years, even at times when hopes seemed dim. We are so profoundly thankful to all of them. We can’t wait to embrace Subu and welcome him home as a free man.”
Though Cantorna stood by the evidence offered at Vedam’s trials and the expert testimony presented at the February evidentiary hearing, he said he believes dismissing the case was ultimately the right call.
“It is not a decision made lightly,” Cantorna said. “Nevertheless, given everything that has happened thus far, I believe it is the just decision to make.”
READ ALL OF STATECOLLEGE.COM’S COVERAGE OF THE SUBU VEDAM CASE HERE.
