Hearing begins Monday in last of five New Hampshire juvenile lifer resentencings
Robert Tulloch, a Vermont man, was automatically sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the 2001 stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop, a married couple who were both professors at Dartmouth College. Tulloch was 17 at the time.
Tulloch’s resentencing hearing, which began Monday in Grafton County Superior Court, is the last of five for New Hampshire inmates who were sentenced to life without parole as juveniles. The hearings stem from U.S. Supreme Court rulings: the Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory life without parole for juveniles is unconstitutional, and later applied that decision retroactively.
The state has not disclosed what sentence it will seek at the hearing. In a court filing last week, Tulloch’s attorneys, Richard Guerriero and Oliver Bloom, argued that a minimum sentence in the range of 30 to 40 years is appropriate, based on a review of other murders committed by juveniles in New Hampshire and cases nationwide that were affected by the Supreme Court rulings.
The attorneys also said Tulloch’s prison records show he has matured. They said after some initial misconduct early in his incarceration, he has had no major infractions since 2012 and no minor infractions since 2017. “The vast majority of his write-ups are for possessing too many books,” they wrote.
MSI reported earlier Monday that Tulloch’s hearing marks the end of a decade-long legal process in New Hampshire, where the Supreme Court’s rulings gave five men serving life sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles a chance at freedom. The rulings affected hundreds of juvenile lifers nationwide.
Tulloch, now 43, has been incarcerated for 25 years. The hearing is expected to determine whether his sentence will be reduced to a minimum of 30 to 40 years, which could make him eligible for parole in the future.