Updated 5:23 p.m. Aug. 28, 2025 with comment from Subramanyam Vedam’s niece and attorney.
A Centre County judge on Thursday vacated the conviction of a State College man who has spent more than 40 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit.
President Judge Jonathan Grine ruled that Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam was deprived of due process rights and a fair trial when he was found guilty of the 1980 murder of Thomas Kinser. The order granting Vedam a new trial came after a two-day evidentiary hearing in February.
Vedam’s niece Zoë Miller-Vedam said in a statement that his family and supporters are grateful for the decision and hopeful that it will lead to his exoneration and release.
“The case against Subu, which was always blatantly unfounded, completely crumbles in light of the evidence we now know the prosecutor concealed,” Miller-Vedam said. “A fair trial, where this evidence would finally have its day in court, will unequivocally show that Subu was convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. Today’s ruling is the first crucial step toward restoring integrity to a justice system that failed not only Subu, but the community that depends on it to fairly investigate crimes and hold the right people accountable.”
County prosecutors now will have the option of retrying Vedam — a difficult task in a decades-old case with some witnesses and physical evidence no longer available. They can also appeal Grine’s decision, or they can choose not to retry the case, which would result in the 64-year-old Vedam’s release from Huntingdon state prison, where he has been incarcerated for the last 42 years.
District Attorney Bernie Cantorna said in a statement on Thursday that the facts presented at trial and expert testimony at the February hearing gave his office “confidence in the verdict reached by the jury.” The DA’s office “will consider all its options, including the merits of appealing today’s ruling as well as retrying the case,” before a pre-trial conference scheduled for November, Cantorna said.
“We are sensitive to how difficult and confusing this news is to the surviving family and friends of Mr. Kinser, and we are committed to following the facts and the law in pursuit of a just outcome,” Cantorna said.
Vedam attorney Gopal Balachandran said that though the current DA’s office was not responsible for the original prosecution, “it has a duty to accept the court’s ruling and correct this injustice.”
“We are thrilled that Judge Grine substantiated what we have argued all along––that Subu was wrongfully convicted when prosecutors in his original trial withheld key information and failed to correct false testimony, inflicting 42 years of injustice on him,” Balachandran said. “”We urge DA Cantorna to end Subu’s anguish and begin to remedy the blight on our justice system without delay. We believe it is both the only principled decision that can be made and the only way to salvage the honor of a justice system that has been called into question by this case.”
Vedam was convicted in 1983 and again after a 1988 retrial of fatally shooting Kinser in the fall of 1980, when both were 19 years old.
Kinser’s body was discovered in 1981 in a sinkhole at Bear Meadows in Harris Township, and Vedam was the last known person to see him alive. Prosecutors said he used a .25 caliber handgun to kill Kinser, but a murder weapon was never recovered. 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.
Attorneys led by Balachandran began to discover in 2022 evidence they say was suppressed by prosecutors at the time of his trial, including an FBI report they contend shows that the bullet hole in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been made by a .25.
That report only came to light after Vedam’s attorneys were granted access to the full case file by the DA’s office and found a handwritten note with the size of the bullet hole, believed to have been written by former Centre County DA Ray Gricar, who prosecuted the 1988 retrial.
Balachandran’s team subsequently received the full FBI report in early 2024 and said it also showed the prosecution suppressed data generated by an FBI Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis conducted on a test-fire bullet and a bullet found at the site of Kinser’s remains.
During the hearing in February, expert witnesses for Vedam testified that the bullet hole and other evidence showed the shot would not have come from a .25. An expert witness for the prosecution said there is no significant statistical difference in the holes created by a .22 and a .25, and that using the size of the hole to assert the caliber was not advisable.
Grine wrote, however, that “much of this battle of the experts” was not the basis for his decision and is a matter for a possible retrial. Rather, it was the question of what impact 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 the only reason they became available was because the district attorney’s office and the bureau voluntarily chose to turn the documents over to his post-conviction attorneys in 2024.
Grine wrote that “there is reasonable probability the jury’s judgment would have been affected” if an FBI agent’s bullet hole measurements had been provided. Undermining the credibility of the agent who testified that the bullet came from a .25 “with the concrete evidence that his evidence belied his own conclusion” could have potentially “severed the link” between Vedam and the crime, according to the order.
Vedam is entitled to relief because the suppression of the evidence “undermines confidence in the outcome of the trial,” Grine wrote
Prosecutors knew or should have known that the agent provided false testimony and failed to correct it, the judge added.
“The Commonwealth cannot meet its burden of demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that this error did not contribute to the verdict, and consequently, [Vedam’s] conviction cannot stand,” Grine wrote.
Miller-Vedam said the decision is a “testament to Subu’s stalwart commitment, in the face of so much unfathomable suffering over the last 42 years, to obtain truth and justice even when the system put so many obstacles in his path.”
“It is also a tribute to the unwavering support of the community members that have stood with our family to remedy a glaring wrong by a justice system that acts in their name,” she added.
