Expect a swift—and angry—response on this one.
The N.C. Court of Appeals released its opinion today in the case of Laurence Alvin Lovette, one of two men convicted of killing UNC-Chapel Hill Student Body President Eve Carson in 2008. The high-profile murder case was one of the most notorious in UNC-Chapel Hill’s history.
According to Tuesday’s court opinion, Lovette is due a resentencing because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last summer in Miller v. Alabama. The nation’s highest court ruled then that a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” if the defendant was under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. Lovette was 17 when Carson was murdered.
The state court opinion vacated Lovette’s sentence and ordered the trial court to “determine the appropriate sentence” for Lovette.
Read former INDY Week writer Matt Saldaña’s 2008 Front Porch feature on Carson here.
