NORTH HAVERHILL, N.H. (AP) — 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 held Wednesday in Grafton County Superior Court to consider legal issues raised in Tulloch’s case. Tulloch, 41, chose not to attend.

His attorney, Richard Guerriero, said that a child defendant should have the opportunity to at least be considered for parole.

“We’re not asking you to find that you can never sentence a juvenile to life in prison," Guerriero told Judge Lawrence MacLeod Jr. ”We’re not asking you to find that a person who commits a homicide before the age of 17 is guaranteed to have to be released from prison.”

Tulloch 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.

At least 28 states have banned such sentences for crimes committed when the defendant is a child. But efforts to pass similar legislation in New Hampshire have not succeeded.