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Man convicted of double murder at 16 resentenced to life without parole

CHESTER, S.C. — A Chester man sentenced to life in prison when he was 16 for a 1988 double homicide has been sentenced again to life without parole.

Theodore Harrison received his new sentence Friday after a ruling in 2012 from the state and U.S. Supreme Courts said a life sentence without parole for someone under age 18 when the crime happened is unconstitutional.

[RELATED: Supreme Court ruling puts 30-year-old double murder case back in spotlight]

Harrison admitted killing 22-year-old Renee Collins and 18-year old Brian Stephenson during a robbery in Chester County in 1988. Their bodies were found 41 days later in some woods near Highway 9 in Richburg, South Carolina.

 

 

Authorities said Theodore Harrison and Robert Moore approached the car that Rollings and Stephenson were sitting in outside a Chester convenience store on Feb. 9, 1988. The teenagers pulled guns on the couple, made them drive out to Highway 9, forced them into the woods and shot them so they could steal their car and drive down to Florida.

Revisiting the case has been trying for Stephenson's family.

“It’s almost unbearable. After 30 years of pain it never goes away,” Stephenson’s mother, Kay Stephenson, told Channel 9.

[READ MORE: South Carolina families forced to relive murders decades later]

In March, a psychologist testified that teenagers' brains aren't fully developed at age 16. Harrison's lawyer Micah Leddy said Harrison, now 46, has been rehabilitated in prison, but prosecutors said Harrison had a history of violent behavior that can't be ignored.

There were 15 cases in South Carolina and about 90 in North Carolina where sentencing had to be done all over again because of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

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