City man who killed parents denied resentencing, will stay in prison till at least 2035

Defense attorney Meredith Lugo confers with convicted parent killer Robert Dingman during his 2018 resentencing hearing in Strafford County Superior Court. (Rochester Voice file photo)

CONCORD - The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the sentence of a Rochester man convicted of killing his parents in 1997.
Robert Dingman, who was 17 when he and his younger brother committed the murders in 1996, initially got life without parole, but that sentence was tossed when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out automatic life sentences for minors in 2012.
He was later resentenced to 40 years to life, a sentence the state's High Court let stand on Tuesday.
Vance and Eve Dingman were fatally shot when the then 17-year-old Dingman, along with his younger brother Jeffrey, who was 14, took turns fatally shooting and taunting them inside their Rochester home on Old Dover Road on Feb. 6, 1996. The motive was frustration over their parents' disciplinary style, which they thought too strict.
Under the 2018 resentencing order by Superior Court Judge Tina Nadeau, Robert Dingman was to serve 20 years to life for each murder, which means he could see potential parole in 2035.
When Dingman killed his parents in February 1996 he was 17 and considered an adult, which is why he was able to get life without parole. But since 1996, New Hampshire law shifted the age of adulthood to 18, paving the way for the resentencing in 2018 and again this year.
During his two-day resentencing hearing in 2018 Dingman took the stand in his own behalf telling the court that his conscious decision making hadn't fully formed when he was 17 and committed the vicious murders.
During the 1997 trial Jeffrey Dingman said his older brother instigated the killings, which they carried out using their father's .22 caliber handgun.
Jeffrey Dingman has been out on parole since March 2014.