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CONCORD, NH – As a result of a Jan. 25 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, four men incarcerated in New Hampshire, all sentenced years ago as teenagers to spend life in prison – with no chance for parole – will now be re-sentenced.
The court said in Montgomery v. Louisiana on Monday that its 2012 ruling that mandatory life without parole for juveniles constitutes cruel and unusual punishment applies retroactively.
That means the four men that could have benefited from it are now to be re-sentenced, even though their convictions happened years before the 2012 decision.
Eduardo Lopez Jr., Robert Tulloch, Robert Dingman and Michael Soto will now all be re-sentenced, according to Lopez’s attorney, Paul Borchardt of the New Hampshire Public Defender’s Office.
“Each of them can still get life without parole, but they can all get lesser sentences as well,” Borchardt said Monday.
The four men were all 17 when they committed unrelated homicides.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that they should all be re-sentenced because of the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, but it was unclear until Monday’s decision whether it was retroactive.
- Eduardo Lopez Jr. was convicted of shooting Robbie Goyette to death during a robbery in Nashua in 1991.
- Robert Tulloch was convicted in the 2001 stabbing deaths of Dartmouth College professors Half and Susanne Zantop.
- Robert Dingman was convicted of killing his parents in Rochester in 1996
- Michael Soto was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder for the Manchester slaying of Aaron Kar in 2007.
Last week, in Hillsborough County Superior Court South in Nashua, a status hearing was scheduled for March 14 to see if Montgomery v. Louisiana was decided, Borchardt said.
⇒Read the full story here on IndepthNH.org
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About InDepthNH: Nancy West founded the nonprofit New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism in April. West is the executive editor of the center’s investigative news websiteInDepthNH.org. West has won many awards for investigative reporting during her 30 years at the New Hampshire Union Leader. She has taught investigative journalism at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting’s summer program for pre-college students at Boston University. West is passionate about government transparency. The New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, formerly called Investigative News Network, which is also InDepthNH.org’s fiscal sponsor. Click here to read about INN to learn more about the mission of nonprofit news.
