Telegraph file photo Eduardo Lopez listens to testimony at his resentencing hearing in 2017. The state Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Lopez's appeal of a previous Superior Court order regarding his prison sentence. (Telegraph file photo)

CONCORD – Eduardo Lopez Jr., the former Nashua man convicted of first-degree murder and initially sentenced to life in prison without parole – a sentence later modified to 45-years-to-life – has been denied his Supreme Court appeal in which he argued the modified sentence is nevertheless the “de facto equivalent” of a life sentence.

Although Lopez, 17 at the time of the murder, was tried as an adult, he was granted a re-sentencing hearing following a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Eighth Amendment forbids “a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without parole for juvenile offenders.”

Following the re-sentencing hearing, which took place in 2017 in Hillsborough County Superior Court South, Judge Lawrence Smukler modified Lopez’s sentence to 45-years-to-life, based largely on the fact Lopez will have the opportunity to be considered for parole at age 62 – a prison term that, Smukler wrote in his ruling, is not the equivalent of a life term.

Further, the minimum sentence is several years less than the 51 1/2 years the prosecution asked Smukler to impose. The longer term, Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Strelzin said at the time, was “probably” what Lopez would have received if Smukler was sentencing him anew.

Lopez filed the Supreme Court appeal in late 2020. It was subsequently accepted, and oral arguments took place in January. The justices issued their denial order last week.

Lopez had turned 17 just a month before the shooting, which claimed the life of well-known Nashua businessman Robert Goyette.

The shooting came during a roughly two-hour rampage by Lopez, who first shot and wounded a homeless man then crossed Main Street and confronted Goyette, who was sitting in his car waiting for his wife in front of a downtown restaurant.

Lopez fled after shooting Goyette, prompting a massive police response in which some officers worked the scene while others fanned out and combed the streets and alleys searching for Lopez.

It wasn’t long before an officer spotted Lopez near his residence at Spring and East Pearl streets, but when the officer ordered him to stop, Lopez confronted the officer, and was in the process of assaulting the officer when another officer, driving through the intersection, spotted them and helped subdue Lopez.

Initially charged as a juvenile, Lopez was re-arrested in February 1993 and arraigned for first-degree murder, paving the way for his trial as an adult.

He would be convicted four months later on the first-degree murder charge, which brought the automatic sentence of life in prison without parole.

Had Lopez been tried and convicted as a juvenile, he would have been committed to a youth detention facility and eligible for release the day he turned 19.

The 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, known as Miller v. Alabama, holds that a trial court must take into account the “attributes of youth” before imposing a life sentence without parole upon a juvenile offender, according to the case.

The ruling also holds that automatically sentencing defendants age 17 or younger to life in prison without the possibility of parole constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

The ruling, however, doesn’t prohibit New Hampshire from certifying juveniles to stand trial as adults – but juveniles will no longer be automatically sentenced to life without parole for crimes that carry that sentence.

Further, judges must consider other factors, such as the juvenile’s upbringing, criminal history or lack thereof, and similar mitigating and aggravating circumstances.

Lopez is one of four New Hampshire defendants affected by Miller v. Alabama.

Robert Dingman, who with his brother killed their parents in 1996 in Rochester and was convicted in 1997, was re-sentenced in 2018 to two consecutive 20-years-to-life terms.

Michael Soto, who was 17 when he was convicted in the 2007 murder of Aaron Kar in Manchester, was re-sentenced in February 2019 to 25-years-to-life.

Robert Tulloch, one of two young men convicted in the notorious 2001 stabbing deaths of Dartmouth College professors Half and Susanne Zantop, has come up for review, but so far no hearing dates have been scheduled.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.