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N.H. Supreme Court Mandates New Sentencing Hearings For Four Underage Murderers

Ben McLeod
/
Flickr Creative Commons

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled four men sentenced to life in prison for murders committed when they were minors should get new sentencing hearings. The decision retroactively applies a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling that deemed mandatory life-sentences for juveniles cruel and unusual punishment.

It’s entirely possible that when Robert Dingman, Eduardo Lopez, Robert Tulloch, and Michael Soto get their new sentencing hearings they will again be given life without parole, but Gilles Bissonnette, an attorney with the New Hamsphire Civil Liberties Union, says what’s important is this time around that sentence won’t be mandatory. He says the judge will now be able to consider their youth as a mitigating factor.

“It reaffirms the principle that, as any parent knows and science has proven, children are different from adults,” he says, following the ruling.

Dates for new sentencing hearings for the convicted killers have not been set.

Sam Evans-Brown has been working for New Hampshire Public Radio since 2010, when he began as a freelancer. He shifted gears in 2016 and began producing Outside/In, a podcast and radio show about “the natural world and how we use it.” His work has won him several awards, including two regional Edward R. Murrow awards, one national Murrow, and the Overseas Press Club of America's award for best environmental reporting in any medium. He studied Politics and Spanish at Bates College, and before reporting was variously employed as a Spanish teacher, farmer, bicycle mechanic, ski coach, research assistant, a wilderness trip leader and a technical supporter.
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