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After serving a 43-year sentence for a friend’s murder that he did not commit, Subramaniam Vedam was set to walk away from a crime he had not committed. pennsylvania Jail this month.
Vedam and Thomas Kinser were 19-year-old students Penn State University In 1980 when Vedam asked him to buy a ride drugsBecame the last person to see Kinser alive.
Kinser’s van was later found outside his apartment. Nine months later, hikers found his body miles away in a wooded area.
after its start strong belief After being thrown out, Vedam faced unusual questions during his re-hearing in 1988.
“Mr Vedam, where were you born?” Center County District Attorney Ray Gricker asked. “How many times will you go back India,
“During your teenage years, did you ever delve into meditation?”
Penn State law professor Gopal Balachandran, who won the reversal, believes the questions were designed to isolate him from the all-white jury that returned the second guilty verdict.
In August, a judge threw out Vedam’s sentence. Advocate New ballistic evidence was found that prosecutors had never disclosed.
As his sister prepared to bring him home on October 3, the thin, white-haired Vedam was taken into federal custody in 1999. exile order. The 64-year-old man, who came to the US legally from India at the age of 9 months, now faces another tough legal battle.
During the police investigation Vedam was detained on drug charges and eventually charged with murder. He was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. To resolve the drug case, he pleaded no contest to four counts of sales lsd And accused of theft. The 1988 retrial brought no relief to his situation.
Although the defense long questioned the ballistics evidence in the case, the jury, which heard that Wedham had purchased a .25-caliber gun from someone, never heard that the FBI report showed the bullet wound was too small to have been fired from that gun. Balachandran got that report only when he investigated the matter in 2023.
After a hearing on the issue, a Center County judge threw out the conviction and the district attorney decided not to retry the case this month.
Amid the Trump administration’s focus on mass deportations, Vedam’s lawyers must persuade an immigration court that a 1980s drug conviction should be given more weight than the years he wrongfully spent in prison.
For some time, immigration law allowed people who had improved their lives to obtain such exemptions. Vedam never paid attention to him because he was found guilty of murder.
“He was someone who was deeply wronged,” said immigration lawyer Ava Benach. “(And) those 43 years are not a blank slate. He lived a remarkable experience in prison.”
Vedam earned several degrees behind bars, taught hundreds of fellow prisoners and spent almost half a century with only one infraction, which involved eating rice brought from outside.
His lawyers hope the immigration judge will consider the totality of his case. The administration opposed the effort in a brief filed Friday. So Vedam lives in an 1,800-bed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in central Pennsylvania.
“Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the United States,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email about the case.
The Vedams were among the first Indian families in the area known as “Happy Valley”, where their father came as a postdoctoral fellow in 1956. An elder daughter was born in State College, but “Subu”, as he was known, was born when the family returned to India in 1961.
They returned to State College forever before her first birthday and became the family that welcomed new members of the Indian diaspora to the city.
“They were completely engaged. My father loved university. My mother was a librarian and helped start the library,” said his sister, Saraswati Vedam, 68, a midwifery professor in Vancouver, British Columbia.
When she left for college in Massachusetts, Subu became involved in the counterculture of the late 1970s, growing her hair long and using drugs while taking classes at Penn State.
Immigration lawyer Benach often represents clients trying to remain in the US despite prior violations. Nevertheless, given the constitutional violations involved, she considers the Vedam case to be “truly extraordinary”.
He said, “Forty-three years of false imprisonment for possession with intent to distribute LSD when he was 20 years old was more than a sentence.”
Vedam may have to spend several more months in custody before the Board of Immigration Appeals decides whether to reopen the case. ICE officials said in a brief speech Friday that the clock had run out several years ago.
“He has provided no evidence or argument to show that he has been diligent in securing his rights as it relates to his immigration status,” wrote Assistant Chief Counsel Kathryn B. Frisch.
Saraswati Vedam is saddened by the latest delay, but said her brother is patient.
“He knows more than anyone else that sometimes things don’t make sense,” he said. “You just have to stay the course and keep hoping that truth and justice and compassion and kindness will prevail.”