Subramanyam (Subu) Vedam

EARLY HISTORY OF THE CASE

Here’s what you need to know about Subu’s case and the judicial errors, violations of his basic rights, and mysterious suppression and disappearance of evidence and testimony that led to his wrongful conviction and life sentence.

 

THE CONTEXT

State College, Pennsylvania is a small town with a big university. Nearly 50,000 students reside on the campus of Penn St. University, while the surrounding region in Centre County PA, is mostly rural and agricultural. In the 1980s, crime became more common in the region known as “Happy Valley,” and local residents associated these changes with the university. There was considerable "town vs. gown" tension.

 

THE CRIME

In late 1980, a 19-year-old boy, Tom Kinser, was reported missing. Nine months later, in September 1981, his remains were found in a wooded area. The coroner discovered a bullet wound in his skull.

 

THE BACKGROUND

Subu has been a permanent resident of the United States since he arrived from India with his parents in 1962 at nine months of age. He was raised with a deep respect for India and his heritage. Subu’s father was deeply committed to Mahatma Gandhi's teachings on nonviolence and tolerance, and he passed those principles on to Subu and his sister.

 

Throughout his youth and into his college years, Subu was never involved in any fighting or violence. On the contrary, he was known among his peers for his calm and peaceful attitude. He maintained close contact with his family, joining them for celebrations and trips to India. He continued to observe many Hindu traditions and took an interest in his extended family, both in the United States and in India. By 1981, when he was 20, he had enrolled at Penn State University and was working as a lab technician.

 

Subu and Tom had been school classmates since the late 1970s and had been roommates for one summer.

 

TOM'S DISAPPEARANCE

On the day of Tom’s disappearance in December 1980, Subu called him seeking a ride to a nearby town. Tom agreed, borrowed his family’s van from his parents, and went to pick up Subu. Later that day, the van was returned to its usual parking space at his apartment, but no one witnessed its return.

 

SUBU’S ARREST

In March 1982, Subu was arrested and held on 19 charges unrelated to Tom Kinser's death. He was never notified that, as an Indian citizen, he had a right to contact his consulate for assistance. Subu’s parents returned immediately from a sabbatical in Germany and sought legal assistance. On the day that they went to post their house towards bail, Subu was charged with first degree murder and the option of bail was removed. Other charges were dropped.

 

Subu was then imprisoned without bail for nearly a year. He was labeled a "foreigner likely to flee," even though he had lived in State College continuously from the age of nine months. The authorities had already confiscated his passport and green card.

 

PRETRIAL MEDIA PREJUDICE

Before his case came to trial, Subu was subjected to extensive and pervasive prejudicial pretrial publicity. Every day for months, news articles on the front page of the town's only newspaper suggested that Subu was unable to reconcile Indian values with American values, and hence had a “torn psyche” and “uncontrollable internal rage.” Before and during both trials the judge repeatedly denied motions for discovery, expert witnesses, and change of venue, as well as objections to prejudicial lines of questioning.

 

The prosecution indicated it would pursue the death penalty for Subu,despite the absence of any aggravating circumstance which would have made the death penalty possible. In addition, the jury selection procedure excluded students and others from the University community.

 

THE FIRST TRIAL

The first trial was held in February, 1983, and as the case unfolded it became clear that there were no witnesses and no direct evidence. There was no gun, no exact date of death, and no credible motive. No evidence of animosity between Tom and Subu was ever shown. A local teenager testified that he had sold Subu an antique handgun. No one witnessed this transaction and the evidence presented did not establish that this was the murder weapon. (And in fact, new evidence shows that the bullet wound in the victim’s skull could not have been made by the gun in question.)

 

No other investigations or evidence suggesting possible other suspects were presented. An all-white jury populated exclusively by people older than 40 convicted Subu and sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole.

 

THE SECOND TRIAL

Subu’s defense team appealed the conviction on the basis of insufficient evidence, lack of change of venue, jury selection procedures, denial of expert witnesses, and more. The State Superior Court and State Supreme Court overturned the conviction citing many trial irregularities, the fact that the judge admitted improper evidence, the failure to set bail, and the case was remanded for a new trial.

 

In February 1988, the case was sent back to the same judge and the same prosecutor for retrial. Despite continued adverse local publicity, the request for a change of venue. The jury selected was again local, white, and middle-aged.

 

Again, evidence was presented about the discovery of the body, the transfer of the remains to the pathologist's office, the retrieval of bullets and casings from the wooded area, and the events of the day that Tom disappeared. With much of its prior case ruled impermissible by the appellate court, the prosecution presented facts about drug use among the teenagers involved, but no evidence for a motive was produced.

 

The gun that prosecutors identified as the murder weapon was never produced, nor was any evidence connecting it to the crime. In fact, 40 years later, in 2022, documents surfaced showing that prosecutors concealed an FBI report concluding that the gun they tried to link to Subu could not have fired the shot that killed the victim.

 

IRRELEVANT & DISCRIMINATORY QUESTIONING

Then, for the first time, the defense put Subu on the stand to testify. He was on the stand for three hours. He was repeatedly asked to list all the recreational drugs he had ever tried. The prosecutor questioned him at length about his citizenship, about his ''many trips to India" over the space of 10 years, and about his practices of daily meditation and yoga. He was asked whether these practices helped him to maintain his composure, whether he could stay up all night, and whether he had ever been to the bazaars of India to purchase drugs. None of this was relevant to the case.

 

When Subu tried to explain that his trips were to visit family (he was 5 to 15 years of age during that period), and that meditation was part of his Hindu upbringing, he was not allowed to testify. The judge allowed this line of questioning despite several objections from the defense attorney. Mysteriously, this entire lengthy exchange, including the defense attorney's objections, does not appear in the trial transcript.

 

WITHELD EVIDENCE

Throughout the course of its investigation, the police department recorded interviews with various individuals, including others suspected of committing the murder. Neither the transcript of the recordings nor the recordings themselves were provided to defense counsel at the time of the trials or during subsequent appeals. Moreover, these suppressed recordings and transcripts reveal a troubling pattern by investigators of feeding information to witnesses rather than objectively seeking information on who actually committed Kinser’s murder. Investigators fixated on Vedam as the lone suspect and disregarded other viable leads.

 

The jury convicted Subu and sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole. Following the trial, some jurors said they did not believe they had the whole story.