The State College man who won his freedom after being incarcerated for more than 40 years on a now-overturned murder conviction was taken into custody by federal immigration authorities upon his release from prison on Friday.
Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Friday afternoon on a detainer issued in 1988, a state Department of Corrections spokesperson said. It happened after the DOC received documents from Centre County Court releasing Vedam from Huntingdon state prison, where he had been jailed since 1983.
Gopal Balachandran, Vedam’s attorney, confirmed that the 64-year-old was taken to the Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center in Clearfield County.
“We are disappointed that Subu has been taken into ICE custody,” Saraswathi Vedam, Subu Vedam’s sister, said in a statement. “This immigration matter is a remnant of Subu’s original murder conviction which has now been overturned. Since that wrongful conviction has been officially vacated, and the charges against Subu have been dismissed, we have asked the immigration court to re-open the case and account for the fact that Subu has been exonerated.”
Subu Vedam has lived in the United States since he was 9 months old, according to a Bellisario College of Communications feature. His parents immigrated to the United States from India in 1956 for his father’s postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State. After a family death, they moved back to India for a short time, during which Vedam was born, before returning to State College.
Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna on Thursday filed to dismiss charges against Vedam for the 1980 murder of Thomas Kinser near State College, just over a month after a judge overturned Vedam’s conviction and ordered a new trial.
Cantorna said that with key evidence and witnesses no longer available, it would be nearly impossible to prosecute the decades-old case. He also said Vedam’s history as a model inmate throughout his 44 years behind bars factored into the decision not to pursue a new trial.
Vedam has steadfastly maintained his innocence, and in recent years his appeal attorneys uncovered suppressed evidence that Centre County Judge Jonathan Grine concluded could have undermined the prosecution’s case at trial.
