Subramanyam ‘Subu’ Vedam sets record as Pennsylvania’s longest-serving exoneree
When Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam was released Friday from a Huntingdon County maximum security prison after 43 years, he became the longest-serving exoneree in Pennsylvania history.
He is one of nearly 150 inmates in Pennsylvania, mostly minority men convicted of murder, to see his conviction overturned after years or decades behind bars.
Vedam, who was immediately placed in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody upon his release, spent decades in prison for the 1980 killing of his friend, 19-year-old Thomas Kinser. Centre County prosecutors dropped Vedam’s murder charge Thursday after his attorneys found a contemporaneous note disputing the kind of bullet used in the killing.
In the three years before the release of Vedam, who is Indian, the distinction of being Pennsylvania’s longest-serving exoneree passed among several Black men from Philadelphia. Each of the men was convicted during the tenure of a young district attorney named Ed Rendell.
Here’s a closer look at the five men who, before Vedam’s release, spent the longest time imprisoned in Pennsylvania before being exonerated.
Gregory Holden, imprisoned 40 years and eight months
It was 1983, and Gregory Holden was 22 years old when Philadelphia police arrested him in connection with the 1981 murder of Eric “Kaboobie” DeLegal, 21. DeLegal had been shot six times inside his south Philadelphia home the week before Christmas.
Prosecutors said Holden took part in a plan to rob DeLegal alongside several other men, including another of Pennsylvania’s longest-serving exonerees, Bruce Murray. The commonwealth’s key witness, an alleged accomplice named Douglas Haughton, had been threatened with the death penalty by the police before implicating Holden and Murray, according to a lawsuit Murray filed against the city of Philadelphia last year.
Haughton pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for his testimony and was paroled in 1989. But a jury found Holden, Murray and another alleged accomplice named Tyrone Wesson guilty of murder and other charges after three days of deliberation. All three were sentenced to life in prison in April 1984.
Several factors cast doubt on the charges after the conviction, however, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Haughton, the star witness, contradicted his own testimony and that of the police in the lead-up to the jury’s decision. He ended up recanting the year after his sentencing, claiming he and Wesson alone had met DeLegal on the night of the murder to buy marijuana, and DeLegal was killed as the men struggled over a shotgun.
Murray’s lawsuit further claimed Philadelphia police had suppressed evidence contradicting their theory, including a failed polygraph test by another witness.
Holden, now 64, tried and failed several times in the past 40 years to have his conviction overturned. It wasn’t until January 2024, months after Murray’s case was overturned, that a federal judge allowed Holden to make the case for his innocence before the court. He was released on bail in March, and a state judge granted the commonwealth’s motion to dismiss the case.
Bruce Murray, imprisoned 40 years and three months
Bruce Murray’s case largely followed the same path as Holden’s. He was arrested in September 1982 for DeLegal’s murder at 22 years old. He was sentenced to life in prison and spent decades unsuccessfully trying to get his sentence overturned.
The case for his innocence didn’t gain traction until 2020, when a federal judge ruled Murray could pursue a writ of habeas corpus, meaning he could make the case for his innocence. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, led by progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner, agreed three years later.
After six months of legal maneuvering, a federal judge vacated Murray’s conviction in September 2023 and ordered a new trial. The commonwealth abandoned the case the next month.
Murray sued the city of Philadelphia in March 2024, alleging malicious prosecution and evidence suppression. The case is ongoing.
Bruce Reese, imprisoned 40 years and two months
Bruce Reese was 33 years old and out of prison on parole when two men, 35-year-old James Graves and 42-year-old James Huntley, were gunned down after the two attempted to stop a robbery at Walnut Hill, a Philadelphia bar. Reese had already been convicted of a 1974 murder, and an anonymous tip to police pinned him as one of the shooters on that September night in 1982.
The other shooter identified by the tipster was Reese’s brother-in-law, Bernard Jackson, who would go on to be the state’s key witness in the case. Jackson was already in custody on separate robbery charges. Police earned his cooperation after promising not to pursue additional prison time for those charges, according to a 2020 court filing on Reese’s behalf.
Jackson gave several conflicting accounts of who was where and who pulled the trigger on the night of the bar shooting. He variously claimed Reese and a third man, named James Lambert, admitted to him they shot the two men at the bar. Jackson eventually settled on Reese as the shooter at trial, additionally testifying that he lied to police about other aspects of the shooting.
A jury convicted Reese and Lambert of the murders in 1984. Reese was sentenced to life in prison, and Lambert to death. Jackson was sentenced to 12.5 to 25 years, with concurrent sentences for more than a dozen other robberies he committed.
The state’s cases against Reese and Lambert began to show cracks in 2002, when Lambert’s attorneys found evidence that showed Jackson identified a fourth man, Lawrence Woodlock, as having participated in the fatal robbery. Lambert’s conviction was vacated in 2011, and a new trial was ordered. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in 2013 and was released from prison.
It took Reese another decade to get relief from the courts. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office abandoned the case in 2024, and Reese was freed.
Gerald Howell, imprisoned 39 years and eight months
A 17-year-old boy had told police Gerald Howell was to blame for the fatal Christmas Eve 1982 shooting of 44-year-old Herbert Allen. Howell was arrested 12 days into the new year.
The boy, Kenneth Parnell, was the prosecution’s lone witness at the preliminary hearing and testified Howell shot the man during a robbery. At trial, which Howell’s attorney had two weeks to prepare for, the prosecution relied almost entirely on teenage witnesses and provided no physical evidence linking Howell to the crime. He was convicted of the murder in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison.
In the intervening decades, Howell tried unsuccessfully to get his conviction thrown out. Parnell himself confessed to the killing in 1999, and the other witnesses walked back their testimony. Howell’s court petitions were thrown out on procedural grounds.
A judge vacated Howell’s conviction in April 2023 on the grounds that his attorney did not have enough time to prepare for trial. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office dropped the case three months later, and Howell was released from prison.
Willie Stokes, imprisoned 37 years and four months
A 32-year-old Leslie Campbell was shot and killed during a dice game in 1980. It took more than three years for police to find a suspect: Willie Stokes, then 23.
The case against Stokes became fraught early on, in August 1984, when a key witness in the preliminary hearing recanted his testimony at trial. Prosecutors subsequently countered that the witness, Franklin Lee, had fabricated his recantation and that his preliminary hearing testimony was the real truth. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2021 that detectives offered Lee sex, drugs and a lenient sentence for an unrelated murder in exchange for implicating Stokes.
A jury convicted Stokes of murder that same month, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Stokes tried several times to get his conviction overturned, but only made progress after he learned about Lee’s perjury conviction in 2015, 29 years into his life sentence. Stokes’ case picked up steam after the Inquirer report was published in July 2021, and the district attorney’s office jumped to his aid. A judge tossed the conviction four months later, and Stokes was released in January 2022.
This story was originally published October 3, 2025 at 11:11 AM.
