Courts Halt Deportation of Man Exonerated After 43 Years in Prison
A legal permanent resident of the US, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, faces potential deportation to India despite spending over four decades incarcerated for a murder he did not commit.
Two US courts have intervened to temporarily halt the deportation of Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, a 64-year-old man of Indian origin who was exonerated in October after 43 years behind bars for a crime he maintained he did not commit. The stays come as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeks to deport Mr. Vedam to India, a move his family and legal team are fiercely contesting.
Mr. Vedam was initially convicted in 1983 of murdering his former roommate. However, new evidence surfaced leading to his exoneration. Immediately following his release, ICE took him into custody, citing a 1988 deportation order and a prior drug conviction.
Despite arriving in the United States at just nine months old, and having a citizenship application accepted prior to his arrest, ICE is pursuing his removal. He is currently being held at a short-term detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana, which notably includes an airstrip for deportations.
The legal battles began last Thursday, when an immigration judge granted a stay of deportation pending a review of his 1984 drug conviction by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Simultaneously, Mr. Vedam’s lawyers secured a separate stay from a US District Court in Pennsylvania.
The case stems from events surrounding the investigation into his roommate’s death. While initially detained on drug charges, Mr. Vedam ultimately pleaded no contest to four counts of selling LSD and one count of theft in 1984, receiving a sentence of two-and-a-half to five years to be served concurrently with his life sentence for murder.
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, defended ICE’s actions, stating on Wednesday that vacating a single conviction does not preclude enforcement of federal immigration law. “If you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US,” she said.
Mr. Vedam’s legal team argues that the decades of wrongful imprisonment should outweigh the decades-old drug conviction. His lawyer, Ava Benach, described the case as “truly extraordinary,” telling the Associated Press, “Forty-three years of wrongful imprisonment more than makes up for the possession with intent to distribute LSD when he was 20 years old.”
The family emphasizes Mr. Vedam’s rehabilitation during his incarceration, highlighting his completion of three degrees and engagement in community service. They also point to his tenuous ties to India, where ICE intends to send him. “We believe deportation from the United States now, to send him to a country where he has few connections, would represent another terrible wrong done to a man who has already endured a record-setting injustice,” Ms. Benach stated in a previous communication.
The Board of Immigration Appeals is expected to decide within several months whether to review Mr. Vedam’s case, leaving his fate in the balance. The outcome will determine whether a man who has already lost over four decades of his life will be forced to begin anew in a country he barely knows.
