Indian American man gets a chance to prove innocence after 40 years

Reopening of cold case unites Indian American community in Pennsylvania college town

By Arun Kumar

An Indian American man in a Pennsylvania college town convicted of a murder more than 40 years ago that he insists he did not commit, is getting a second chance to prove his innocence.

Thanks to the recent discovery of evidence that was previously withheld from the defense, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam’s case will return to the Centre County Courthouse on Feb 6-7.

READ: 2 convicted in case of Indian family’s death on US-Canada border (November 27th, 2024) 

The local Indian community has mobilized to ensure that this time Subu — the literal first son of their State College community — gets what he they think he was denied in the 1980s, a fair hearing, Penn State Student Media reported.

In 2021, defense lawyer Gopal Balachandran, who has worked with the Innocence Project and is Vedam’s current attorney, asked the Centre County district attorney’s office to open Vedam’s case file, according to the student news site.

They discovered exculpatory evidence — material they argue could have cleared Vedam of guilt — wasn’t given to the defense during the two trials in the 1980s, when Vedam was convicted of shooting and killing Thomas Kinser in a wooded area south of State College.

Now, Balachandran said, he and his team are using the newly found evidence to try and establish Vedam’s innocence, and to claim that his case was a violation of Brady v. Maryland, a precedent-setting decision which stated prosecutors must turn over any piece of evidence to the defense if it could suggest the defendant is not guilty.

“The evidence supports what Subu has been saying all along: He didn’t do this,” Balachandran was quoted as saying.

“They (the FBI) were being intentionally obfuscatory and revealed as little as possible. It was their pattern and practice. They would turn over summaries of their conclusions, but they wouldn’t turn over the underlying data. It’s like reading a scientific paper and just getting the conclusion and not the data or results.”

The prosecution, led by Joshua Andrews, the first assistant district attorney of Centre County, declined comment on this and all questions related to the case, according to Penn State Student Media.

Vedam and Kinser were friends. Prosecutors say it was in high school, while the Vedam family says it was earlier. In any event, both were in the Alternative Program in the State College school district, now the Delta Program. The program was created as a way for students to take responsibility for their own learning through an individualized curriculum.

While Kinser ended up leaving the program, the two kept up a friendship. In the summer of 1980, they even lived together. At the time, Vedam was taking classes at Penn State, and Kinser was working at Charleen Kinser Designs, a small group of toy designers.

In the fall, Vedam returned to his family home, and Kinser and his girlfriend, Beth Warner, moved into an apartment complex called Lion’s Gate. From here, things become unclear.

For reasons never fully explained in court, the pair on Dec 14, 1980, traveled to Lewistown, about 30 miles southeast of State College. Vedam returned, Kinser didn’t. His body was found in a nature area between the two communities months later, on Sep 27, 1981 by hikers. He’d been fatally shot.

It turns out there was hard evidence the defense never saw: the actual size of the bullet wound in Kinser’s head. Prosecutors never turned that over to Vedam’s defense, even though they had the precise measurements.

During the original trial, the FBI’s medical examiner created a report that contained the exact measurements of the bullet wound. The measurements concluded “the hole in Kinser’s skull was simply too small to accommodate a .25 caliber bullet,” according to a petition amendment filed by defense lawyers on Oct 13, 2023.

Furthermore, a police diagram, which also wasn’t turned over, indicated four .22-caliber bullet casings surrounded Kinser. No .25-caliber bullet casings were depicted, according to the court exhibits.

Recent US Census Bureau estimates say that people who chose “Asian alone” to identify themselves make up about 10% of the 40,000 people in State College, the borough that is home to Penn State. But back in the 1960-80s the Asian community as a whole was much smaller, let alone the Indian subgroup.

Vedam’s father and mother, Kuppuswamy and Nalini Vedam, moved to State College in 1956. According to Saraswathi Vedam, Subu’s older sister, they were the first Indian people in town.

It didn’t take long after Subu was charged with first-degree murder in June 1982, for the family to get support from the Indian community, which had grown to about 40 families by the time the allegations against Subu were made. As soon as the local paper, the Centre Daily Times, began covering the case, nearly the whole town became involved, according to Saraswati.

“We didn’t have to organize the community. At the time, it was a big town and gown conflict,” Saraswati said. She remembers Kinser being portrayed as a “local boy” and Subu as a foreigner who couldn’t adjust to the United States.

“The Indian community was very shaken by it … (prosecutors and media) basically took his cultural background and alienated him, othered him from people on the jury who were middle-aged all white,” she added.