An immigration court has temporarily blocked the deportation of a man whose murder conviction was overturned after 43 years
Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, 64, was immediately taken into immigration custody after being freed from state prison last month.
The Board of Immigration Appeals has temporarily blocked federal officials from moving to deport a man who was freed from a Pennsylvania prison last month after his decades-old murder conviction was overturned.
Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, 64, had spent more than 40 years behind bars fighting to reverse his conviction in the shooting death of a high school classmate in Centre County in 1980.
When he succeeded — and state prosecutors dropped all charges against him last month, freeing him from a life sentence — he was immediately taken into immigration custody.
Federal officials said Vedam, a native of India and permanent legal resident of the United States, was the subject of a standing deportation order for a separate conviction from the 1980s for possessing and intending to distribute LSD.
Vedam’s lawyers acknowledge that the drug conviction provides a legal basis for the removal order. But they asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to review his case and overrule the order, saying immigration law permits authorities to exercise discretion in such instances.
It was not immediately clear how quickly the appellate board might consider that argument, or if it would secure Vedam the relief he’s seeking. But Vedam’s attorneys wrote in court documents this week that the board had temporarily blocked his deportation as it considers his case.
Vedam was found guilty at two trials — first in 1983 and again in 1988 — of fatally shooting his friend Thomas Kinser, 19, whose body was found in a sinkhole outside State College. Vedam had consistently maintained that he did not commit the crime.
Earlier this year, a Centre County judge overturned his conviction, ruling that prosecutors had illegally withheld an FBI report from Vedam’s trial lawyers.
The Centre County District Attorney’s Office then declined to retry him, in part due to the passage of time and the unavailability of key evidence and witnesses.
Vedam’s attorneys say he’s lived in the United States with his parents since he was 9 months old, and that he has many supportive relatives and friends in the country, including his sister, an American citizen. Deporting him now, they’ve said, “would represent another terrible wrong.”