A State College man who has spent the past 42 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit is one step closer to getting a new trial.
Centre County President Judge Jonathan Grine on Tuesday ordered an evidentiary hearing to determine if Subramanyam "Subu" Vedam should get a new trial for the 1980 murder of Thomas Kinser.
Vedam was convicted in 1983 and again at retrial in 1988 after prosecutors said he used a .25 caliber gun to kill Kinser. The murder weapon was never recovered, and Vedam's conviction was based in part on his purchase of a .25 caliber gun.
But Vedam's attorneys 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.
The 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. The DA's office then requested from the FBI and provided to Vedam's attorneys the full report earlier this year.
Vedam's team also claims the report shows prosecution suppressed data generated by an FBI Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis conducted on a test-fire bullet and a bullet found at the Bear Meadows sinkhole 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.
Both claims, Grine wrote, are "genuine issues of material fact" that warrant a hearing.
"At trial, the defense outlined its theory from the outset that a key question was whether the Commonwealth was correct that the .25 caliber gun owned by Petitioner was really the weapon used to murder Kinser," Grine wrote. "Large portions of the testimony at trial revolved around the size of the bullet that killed the victim."
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.
Grine did dismiss several other claims brought by Vedam, including that the prosecution withheld the actual murder weapon and a search warrant. There is no evidence, Grine wrote, that the murder weapon was ever recovered, nor that the search warrant application in question was ever adopted or executed.
He also dismissed claims that witness interview transcripts, a sketch showing several .22 caliber bullets at the scene where Kinser was found and the criminal history of a witness who claimed he sold Vedam a gun before Kinser was killed. Each of those have been previously litigated or could have been obtained in a timely manner with due diligence, Grine wrote.
Vedam was 19 years old in the fall of 1980 and was the last known person to see his friend Kinser alive. Kinser’s body was discovered in September 1981 at Bear Meadows in Harris Township.
Prosecutors contended 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 and has been imprisoned at SCI-Huntingdon since then. On appeal 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.
Vedam's attorneys and prosecutors were most recently in court in July to present arguments on the request for an evidentiary hearing.
No date has been set for the hearing. A status conference is scheduled for Oct. 15 to determine the length of the hearing.
Additional reporting by Russell Frank.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE
• Life in Prison: It’s Not a Nice Place to Visit and You Wouldn’t Want to Live There
• Subu’s Story (Part 2)
• A Mother Dies Without Seeing Her Son Go Free
• It’s Time to Give Lifers a Chance at Life
• New Hope for Subu Vedam
• After 42 Years, Another Day in Court for Subu Vedam
• No Decision Yet on Subu Vedam’s Plea for a New Trial
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