CONCORD, N.H.—A man who pleaded guilty as a teenager to the 2001 stabbing deaths of two married Dartmouth College professors is challenging his life-without-parole sentence, saying that the New Hampshire Constitution prohibits it.
Robert Tulloch was 17 when he killed Half Zantop and Susanne Zantop in Hanover as part of a conspiracy he and his best friend concocted to rob and kill people before fleeing to Australia with their ill-gotten gains.
A hearing was scheduled Wednesday in Grafton County Superior Court to consider legal issues raised in Tulloch’s case.
Tulloch, 41, awaits resentencing at a later date, following a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles amounts to “cruel and unusual” punishment. Another opinion made that decision retroactive, giving hundreds of juvenile lifers a shot at freedom. In 2021, the court found that a minor did not have to be found incapable of being rehabilitated before being sentenced to life without parole….