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Read MoreAn Orange County Superior Court judge has affirmed the life-without-parole sentence for Laurence Alvin Lovette for his role in the murder of Eve Carson ’08.
Lovette’s attorneys asked Judge Allen Baddour ’93 to allow him an opportunity for parole after 25 years. Baddour, who also earned his law degree from UNC in 1997, denied the request.
At the time the crime was committed, life without parole was the mandatory minimum for first-degree murder convictions. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that sentencing a youth to life without the possibility of parole constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
The N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that an automatic sentence of life without parole was too harsh for someone of Lovette’s age — he was 17 at the time the crime occurred — and sent the case back to Orange County.
Lovette was convicted in December 2011 of murder in the death of the popular student body president. He also was convicted on robbery and kidnapping charges. Lovette and an accomplice, Demario James Atwater, were accused of forcing Carson into her vehicle and making her withdraw money from ATM machines before shooting her five times.
Atwater pleaded guilty and in September 2010 received a life sentence for kidnapping resulting in death, a life sentence and two 10-year sentences on carjacking and weapons charges, and a 10-year sentence for discharging a weapon resulting in death.
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