Freed decades later, he faces deportation

After waiting more than four decades to clear his name in a friend’s 1980 killing, Subramanyam Vedam was set to walk free from a Pennsylvania prison this month.

- By MarycLalreE DALE

SUBRAMANYAM VEDAM with sister Saraswathi in State College, Pa., in 1981.

Vedam and Thomas Kinser were the 19-year-old children of Penn State University faculty. Vedam was the last person seen with Kinser and was twice convicted of killing him, despite alack of witnesses or motive.

In August, a judge threw out the conviction after Vedam’s lawyers found new ballistics evidence that prosecutors had never disclosed.

As his sister prepared to bring him home on Oct. 3, the thin, white-haired Vedam was instead taken into federal custody over a 1999 deportation order. The 64-year-old, who legally came to the U.S. from India when he was 9 months old, now faces another daunting legal fight.

Amid the Trump administration’s focus on mass deportations, Vedam’s lawyers must persuade an immigration court that a 1980s drug conviction should be outweighed by the years he wrongly spent in prison. For a time, immigration law allowed people who had reformed their lives to seek such waivers. Vedam never pursued it then because of the murder conviction.

“He was someone who's suffered a profound injustice,” said immigration lawyer Ava Benach. And “those 43 years aren't a blank slate. He lived a remarkable experience in prison.”