A federal immigration judge will decide on Thursday whether a State College man who spent more than 40 years in prison for a now-overturned murder conviction should be protected from a deportation order on separate, decades-old drug charges.
Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, 64, testified for more than two hours during a hearing for his request on Wednesday, the first time he has spoken in open court since his 1980s trials for the murder of Thomas Kinser. Speaking via video from a small room at the Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center near Philipsburg, where he has been detained since his release from state prison in October after 43 years of incarceration, Vedam answered questions from his attorney, Department of Homeland Security counsel and Judge Adam Panopoulous.
With the nearly four-hour hearing ending shortly after 5 p.m., Panopoulous said he would issue a decision Thursday morning. Lawful permanent residents convicted of crimes before 1997, when stricter new immigration laws went into effect, can be granted discretionary relief from deportation for certain crimes.
The government is seeking to deport Vedam to India, where he was born. Vedam was born in Mumbai in 1961 during a brief period when his parents returned to their home country, but moved to the United States with his family when he was nine months old. He was raised in State College and was a green card holder days away from earning his citizenship when he was arrested in 1982.
After being convicted in 1983 for Kinser’s murder near State College, Vedam resolved a separate, earlier case by entering a no contest plea to four counts of selling LSD when he was 19 years old. The drug conviction resulted in a 1999 deportation order and is the basis for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s efforts to remove him from the country.
“I believe 43 years is enough. I mean, I’ve been in jail for a long time, unjustly,” Vedam said. “I am part of this society. I’ve never really thought of myself as being from anywhere else, but from State College and from the U.S.”
Much of the questioning on Thursday centered on Vedam’s criminal history in his late teens.
Vedam had been charged with selling 100 doses of LSD four times in controlled buys in 1981 and 1982. DHS attorney Tammy Dusharm likened it to trafficking, while Vedam said he only ever sold it to friends and that he was not a street dealer.
He also had been charged with DUI in 1980 and had a conviction of receiving stolen property for being in possession of a synthetic ruby stolen from a Penn State laboratory, which he said did not steal and had acquired from someone else. He also admitted that he smoked marijuana and took acid during those years but said he had stopped before his arrest because “I wanted to do something with my life that was a little more positive.”
In her closing argument, Dusharm painted Vedam’s legal issues between 1980 and his arrest on the drug charges on March 31, 1982 as a “crime spree.”
Vedam and his attorney, Ava Benach, said they were poor choices of a teenager that he has taken responsibility for and atoned for over decades in a maximum security prison for a conviction that is now vacated.
“I was young and stupid,” Vedam said. “I don’t think that that year and a half or two years is reflective of who I am and the totality of my life. You know, I’ve done good things in my life. I believe I’ve led a life that is something good and contributes to society, contributes to my community. I don’t think that those two years that were somewhat aimless and without focus is who I am and who I want to be.”
Soon after his arrest on the drug charges, Vedam was charged with Kinser’s murder. Vedam was the last known person to see Kinser in December 1980, when both were 19, and Kinser’s body was discovered in a Harris Township sinkhole 10 months later.
Vedam’s conviction in 1983 and at a 1988 retrial 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. A murder weapon was never found, and casings of different calibers were also discovered in the area.
Vedam said on Wednesday that he was “shocked” by KInser’s death. Asked if he killed or harmed Kinser, Vedam said he “most certainly did not” and that he had “no reason whatsoever” to do so.
Prosecutors offered plea deals at both trials, Vedam said, including one with a maximum of six years in prison that would have avoided his current immigration issue. He did not accept them or apply for commutation because he said he could not plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit.
“I knew I was innocent,” he said. “I wasn’t going to take a plea bargain. This whole thing was like somewhat of a bad dream, Kafkaesque or something. I knew I didn’t kill anybody.”
In recent years, a team led by Penn State law professor Gopal Balachandran found evidence not presented at either trial, including documents they say showed that bullet hole in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been made by a .25. In August, a Centre County judge ruled that the evidence could have swayed the jury to find Vedam not guilty at trial and overturned the conviction, and District Attorney Bernie Cantorna announced that he would drop the charges against Vedam.
Cantorna said at the time that he would not have dropped the charges if he believed Vedam posed any danger to society, a comment noted on Wednesday by Vedam and post-conviction defense expert Michael Wiseman, who tested on his behalf.
Benach also pointed to Vedam’s record as a model inmate throughout his time at Huntingdon, where he three degrees, including a master’s, developed literacy programs and tutored other inmates. He said he was only written up once for a violation, when he accepted “a handful of rice” from a kitchen worker because he was carb loading for a fun run benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters, which he also played a lead role in organizing.
The offenses from the early 1980s, Benach said “do not define the man you see before you.”
“What defines him is not a year and a half of bad behavior, of dumb choices that he made when he was a 19- and 20-year-old man,” Benach said. “What is before you is someone who has, for 44 years, chosen to try to improve himself, improve those around him, be a loving member of his family, be a source of support, growth and wisdom to his family, to uplift others through education and charitable works. His experience in prison is thoroughly remarkable, And it just goes to show what he could have accomplished had these 40 years not been taken from him.”
Vedam’s sister, Saraswathi Vedam, described him as a gentle person throughout his life and said that even behind bars he has been like “another parent” to her four, now-adult daughters, whom he speaks to nearly every day.
“They’ve learned to sort of understand the world through him,” she said. “He’s taught them things, he’s mentored them.”
Vedam said that if released he plans to live with one of his nieces in Sacramento, California, where he will be an “uncle nanny” for her 18-month-old daughter. He said he also has been offered a spot in a Ph.D. program and teaching assistantship at Oregon State University.
Several other witnesses were on the list to testify on Vedam’s behalf Wednesday, including State College Mayor Ezra Nanes, but they were not called after Benach and Dusharm agreed to stipulate that their testimony would be consistent with written statements they already submitted.
