November 5, 2025
ICE has been barred from deporting a person whose homicide conviction was overturned after he served 43 years of a life sentence.
Two courts have dominated that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can’t deport a Pennsylvania man whose homicide conviction was overturned after he spent 43 years in jail.
Subramanyam Vedam, 64, was launched from jail on Oct. 3 after his conviction was overturned, AP reported. A authorized everlasting resident who got here to the U.S. as an toddler, Vedam had been sentenced to life for a good friend’s 1980 loss of life. Instantly upon launch, he was taken into immigration custody at a short-term holding heart in Alexandria, Louisiana, that’s geared up with an airstrip for deportations.
The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is searching for to deport Vedam over a no-contest plea to LSD supply prices from when he was round 20. His legal professionals argue that the 4 a long time he wrongfully spent in jail, throughout which he earned levels and tutored fellow inmates, ought to outweigh the outdated drug case.
On Oct. 30, an immigration choose quickly blocked Vedam’s deportation whereas the Bureau of Immigration Appeals decides whether or not to overview his case, a course of that might take a number of months. Vedam’s legal professionals additionally obtained a keep within the U.S. District Courtroom in Pennsylvania the identical day, although that case could also be paused as a result of immigration court docket ruling.
On Nov. 3, a Division of Homeland Safety spokesperson acknowledged that the overturning of Vedam’s homicide conviction doesn’t have an effect on his prior drug conviction.
“Having a single conviction vacated is not going to cease ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration regulation,” Tricia McLaughlin,” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, wrote in an electronic mail.
A Division of Homeland Safety spokesperson wrote in an electronic mail that “Felony unlawful aliens aren’t welcome within the U.S,” regardless of Vedam being a authorized everlasting resident who got here to the U.S. at 9 months outdated together with his dad, who labored as a professor at Penn State.
Vedam, referred to as “Subu,” bought caught up within the late-Nineteen Seventies counterculture whereas learning at Penn State, experimenting with medicine and rising his hair lengthy. In December 1980, he requested Thomas Kinser, a fellow son of a Penn State professor, for a trip to purchase medicine; Kinser disappeared, and his physique was discovered 9 months later.
Vedam was arrested on drug prices and in the end convicted of homicide in 1983, receiving a life sentence with out parole. He additionally pleaded no contest to 4 LSD gross sales counts and a theft cost. A 1988 retrial provided no aid, regardless of protection challenges to ballistics proof, which the jury by no means noticed — an FBI report advised the bullet couldn’t have come from Vedam’s gun.
In 2023, Penn State regulation professor Gopal Balachandran uncovered the report whereas reviewing the case. Following hearings, a Centre County choose overturned Vedam’s conviction, and the district lawyer lately declined to retry the case.
As he sits inside an ICE facility, Vedam’s household expressed aid, together with his sister, Saraswathi Vedam, saying, “We’re grateful that two completely different judges have agreed Subu’s deportation is unwarranted whereas his effort to reopen his immigration case remains to be pending.”
“We’re additionally hopeful that the Board of Immigration Appeals will in the end agree that Subu’s deportation would symbolize one other untenable injustice, inflicted on a person who not solely endured 43 years in a maximum-security jail for a criminal offense he didn’t commit, however has additionally lived within the U.S. since he was 9 months outdated,” Saraswathi Vedam mentioned.
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