Two United States courts have stayed the deportation of Mr Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, a 64-year-old Indian-origin man who spent over four decades in prison for a murder he did not commit.
Mr Vedam, born in India and brought to the US as an infant, was exonerated in October after a Pennsylvania court overturned his 1983 murder conviction for killing his roommate, Mr Thomas Kinser.
However, hours after his release, he was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over a decades-old drug case, which officials cited to justify deporting him to India.
On Oct 30, an immigration judge stayed Vedam’s deportation until the Board of Immigration Appeals reviews his drug conviction during the 1980s, while a US District Court in Pennsylvania issued a parallel stay the same day, reported NDTV.
Mr Vedam remains in custody at an ICE detention centre in Alexandria, Louisiana, used for rapid deportations.
The wrongful conviction that kept Mr Vedam imprisoned for 43 years unravelled after new evidence – including a Federal Bureau of Investigation ballistics report and handwritten notes showing inconsistencies in the prosecution’s claims – surfaced in 2022.
A Pennsylvania judge ruled in August that prosecutors had withheld critical documents, overturning Mr Vedam’s conviction.
Following the exoneration, the local district attorney dismissed all charges, calling further prosecution impossible due to lost evidence and witness deaths. Mr Vedam became Pennsylvania’s longest-incarcerated exoneree.
Despite this, ICE invoked a 1988 deportation order linked to Mr Vedam’s earlier no-contest plea to LSD possession charges when he was 20, reported the BBC.
“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of immigration law,” said Ms Tricia McLaughlin of the Department of Homeland Security, describing Mr Vedam as a “convicted drug trafficker”.
Mr Vedam’s lawyer Ava Benach called his case “truly extraordinary”, saying his wrongful imprisonment “more than makes up for the LSD case when he was 20”.
His family, who say he has no ties to India, called deportation a “second injustice”.
Mr Vedam’s sister Saraswathi told the BBC the stays had brought temporary relief: “He endured 43 years in a maximum-security prison for a crime he didn’t commit and has lived in the US since he was nine months old. Sending him away now would be another untenable wrong.”
The Board of Immigration Appeals is expected to take months to decide whether Mr Vedam can remain in the US – a country he has called home his entire life.
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6 Nov 2025 13:06
