State College man Subu Vedam to remain in custody while government appeal unfolds
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Judge said he lacks jurisdiction to reconsider an immigration judge's detention ruling.
- Vedam will remain at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center while DHS appeal proceeds.
- An immigration judge waived Vedam's deportation after weighing his wrongful imprisonment.
A State College man fighting to walk free in the U.S. for the first time in more than four decades is poised to remain locked up at an immigration detention facility indefinitely following a federal judge’s ruling issued Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV said he does not have jurisdiction to reconsider an immigration judge’s ruling that found Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam is subject to mandatory detention.
Vedam, 64, staved off deportation to India when Immigration Judge Adam Panopoulos found he earned the right to remain in the U.S., but the Department of Homeland Security appealed that decision. He is slated to remain at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center just outside of Philipsburg while the appeal proceeds.
Vedam has spent much of the past eight months there, which followed 43 years of imprisonment at Huntingdon state prison on a since-vacated murder conviction. He is one of the 25 longest-serving exonerees in U.S. history.
“As both a matter of both law and morality, it is unbelievable that the government can continue to hold him in detention even after an immigration court has recognized his right to live freely in the United States,” his sister Saraswathi Vedam said in a written statement.
“Based on his four decades of service and contributions, an immigration judge ruled that America would be best served by letting him come home, so the government shouldn’t have a reason to keep him in captivity any longer. He could instead be reunited with his family.”
A family spokesperson told the Centre Daily Times that Vedam is weighing an appeal of Stickman’s ruling. If one is filed, it would be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
Vedam was born in India but has lived in the U.S. since he was an infant. He was a green-card holder days away from earning his citizenship when he was arrested and charged in 1982 with the killing of Thomas Kinser, 19, of Boalsburg, two years earlier.
He was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but Centre County’s president judge vacated that conviction in August based on ballistics evidence that previous county prosecutors had not disclosed.
Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna later dropped the murder charge. Vedam also had felony convictions for selling LSD in State College, though his no contest pleas came after he was convicted of murder.
Panopoulos waived Vedam’s deportation in April after weighing more than four decades of wrongful imprisonment against the decades-old drug convictions. He found it would be in the best interest of the U.S. for Vedam to remain in the country.
Despite the victory, Panopoulos upheld another immigration judge’s ruling that Vedam is subject to mandatory detention because the case is not final. Vedam’s attorneys have argued the law requiring mandatory detention during an appeal period was not adopted until 1996, many years after they said he would have fought deportation had he not been wrongfully imprisoned.
Stickman said federal law does not limit the length of detention during removal cases and that he did not have the ability to second guess the earlier bond decisions.
“As a result of Stickman’s ruling, Vedam remains mired in his 44th consecutive year behind bars, even though both of the legal cases that put him there — his wrongful murder conviction and the ensuing threat to deport him — have collapsed under judicial scrutiny,” the family spokesperson wrote in a statement.
“By denying Vedam ... the recourse to challenge his ongoing detention, the decision exacerbates a chronic series of injustices that Vedam, himself, described in recent court testimony as ‘Kafkaesque.’ ”
