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Convicted killer should know by end of month if he'll get out of jail early

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A bailiff works to adjust Robert Dingman's handcuffs during his resentencing hearing earlier this week. (Rochester Voice photo)

DOVER - The resentencing of a former Rochester teenager who was serving life without parole for killing his parents in 1996 is now in the hands of a Strafford County Superior court judge who will decide if he should be set free earlier then called for in his original sentence.

Earlier this week testimony from convicted killer Robert Dingman concluded the unusual two-day hearing, which had been predicated on an earlier U.S. Supreme Court ruling which found that life sentences for juveniles was unconstitutional.

Dingman took the stand in his own behalf on Tuesday telling the court that his conscious decision making hadn't fully formed when he was 17 and committed the vicious murders along with his 14-year-old brother, Jeffrey.

Superior Court judge Tina L. Nadeau, who has wide discretion in sentencing parameters, said she would render a decision by the end of the month.

Robert Dingman, 39, is getting his second bite at the apple thanks to a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that concluded life without parole was cruel and unusual punishment for juvenile offenders.

When Dingman, at 17, killed his parents in February 1996, he was considered an adult, which is why he was able to get life without parole, but since 1996, New Hampshire law shifted adulthood to 18.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Strelzin is pressing for two 25-to-life sentences, which would allow Dingman a chance for parole at age 65. Dingman's defense is seeking a chance for parole after his serving 25 years, which could grant him freedom in 2022.

Much of the aggravating or mitigating factors impacting Dingman's chance at release depend on how the court views his psychological state of mind as he and his younger brother, Jeffrey Dingman, who was just 14 at the time, planned and executed the violent deaths of their mother and father.

Strelzin noted in his opening statements that Robert Dingman was the mastermind of the plot to kill Vance and Eve Dingman on a Friday night in February. He argued that Jeffrey was much younger, a follower of his older brother and easily manipulated.

During the 1997 trial Jeffrey Dingman said his older brother instigated the killings, which they carried out using their father's .22 caliber handgun.

Testimony revealed the two teens took turns fatally shooting and taunting their mother and father inside their Dover Road home on Feb. 6, 1996.

Jeffrey Dingman has been out on parole since March 2014.

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