City man who killed parents seeks reduced sentence, transfer to halfway house

Robert Dingman and his defense attorney Meredith Lugo in Strafford Superior Court on Monday (WMUR screenshot)

DOVER - The Rochester man currently serving two 20-year consecutive prison sentences for the murder of his parents in 1996 was back in Strafford Superior Court on Monday seeking a new hearing to reduce his sentence and be allowed into a halfway house to begin transition back into society.
Robert Dingman, who was a 17-year-old Spaulding High junior when he and his younger brother committed the murders, initially got life without parole, but that sentence was tossed when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out automatic life sentences for minors in 2012.
He was later resentenced to 40 years to life, a sentence the state's High Court let stand in April 2021.
On Monday defense attorney Meredith Lugo argued that Dingman has been in prison his entire adult life and has been a model prisoner.
Vance and Eve Dingman were fatally shot when the then 17-year-old Dingman, along with his younger brother Jeffrey, who was 14, took turns fatally shooting and taunting them inside their Rochester home on Old Dover Road on Feb. 6, 1996. The motive was frustration over their parents' disciplinary style, which they thought too strict.
Under the 2018 resentencing order by Superior Court Judge Tina Nadeau, Robert Dingman was to serve 20 years to life for each murder, which means he could see potential parole in 2035.
When Dingman killed his parents in February 1996 he was 17 and considered an adult, which is why he was able to get life without parole. But since 1996, New Hampshire law shifted the age of adulthood to 18, paving the way for the resentencing in 2018.
During the 1997 trial Jeffrey Dingman said his older brother instigated the killings, which they carried out using their father's .22 caliber handgun.
Jeffrey Dingman has been out on parole since March 2014.