Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam will return in early 2025 to the courthouse where he was first convicted of murder more than 40 years ago for a hearing that will play a key role in determining if he gets a new trial.
Centre County President Judge Jonathan Grine this week scheduled an evidentiary hearing in the case for Feb. 6-7 at the county courthouse in Bellefonte. Vedam will be transported from Huntingdon state prison, where he has spent two-thirds of his life for a crime he says he did not commit, to attend the two-day proceeding in person.
Vedam was convicted in 1983 and again at retrial in 1988 of the murder of his friend Thomas Kinser in the fall of 1980, when both men were 19 years old. Prosecutors said he used a .25 caliber handgun to kill Kinser near State College, but a murder weapon was never recovered, and Vedam’s conviction was based in part on his purchase of a .25 caliber gun.
Attorneys for Vedam say a newly discovered FBI report was suppressed by the Centre County District Attorney’s Office at the time of his trial and shows that the bullet hole in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been made by a .25. That report only came to light after Vedam’s attorneys were granted access to the full case file and found a handwritten note with the size of the bullet hole, believed to have been written by former Centre County DA Ray Gricar, who prosecuted the 1988 retrial.
Vedam’s team also claims the report shows the prosecution suppressed data generated by an FBI Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis conducted on a test-fire bullet and a bullet found at a sinkhole in the Bear Meadows area of Harris Township where Kinser’s remains were found in September 1981. An FBI agent who testified at trial did not mention that the underlying data demonstrated that the two bullets were not a match.
Grine heard arguments for an evidentiary hearing in July and issued an order granting the hearing in early October, writing that claims presented by Vedam’s attorneys raised “genuine issues of material fact.”
In seeking to have the claims dismissed, the Centre County District Attorney’s Office has argued that the evidence against Vedam was overwhelming, and the size of the hole would not undermine the case.
Prosecutors contended at trial that a .25-caliber bullet and bullet found among Kinser’s remains matched a bullet casing found near where Vedam test-fired a .25 caliber gun when he bought it.
A witness, whose credibility has been questioned by Vedam’s new attorneys because of his extensive criminal history, testified that he sold the gun to Vedam before Kinser’s disappearance. Vedam claims he bought it after Kinser disappeared.
A Centre County jury convicted Vedam in February 1983. On appeal, the state Superior Court remanded the case for a new trial and Vedam was convicted again in February 1988.
He has maintained his innocence and in the intervening years has sought post-conviction relief.
In August 2021, attorneys led by Gopal Balachandran, a Penn State Law professor and State College Borough Councilman, began pursuing a conviction integrity review and worked with Centre County District Attorney to review the full case files, resulting in the discovery of the new evidence.
