WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Kevin Salvador Golphin, a North Carolina man serving life without parole for the 1997 murders of a state trooper and a sheriff’s deputy, The Carolina Journal reported.
The high court rejected Golphin’s petition without comment on Oct. 14, alongside dozens of other cases, according to the report. Golphin, who was 17 at the time of the killings, had argued that North Carolina’s sentencing practices violate the Eighth Amendment by effectively imposing mandatory life-without-parole sentences on juvenile offenders.
His legal team cited the Supreme Court’s Miller v. Alabama (2012) decision, which held that mandatory LWOP sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional, requiring courts to consider youth and its mitigating factors. Golphin’s attorneys claimed that North Carolina courts have effectively disregarded that precedent by treating the nature of a juvenile’s crime as automatically justifying life without parole.
Golphin was originally sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted to life without parole after the Supreme Court barred capital punishment for juveniles in 2005, according to the report. He later sought a resentencing under Miller, but a state trial judge ruled in 2022 that the nature of Golphin’s crimes showed “permanent incorrigibility.” The judge imposed two consecutive LWOP sentences.
A three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the ruling in February 2024. The state Supreme Court declined to review the case in March.
The murders occurred on Sept. 23, 1997. According to court records and news accounts, Golphin and his 19-year-old brother, Tilmon Golphin, were fleeing South Carolina in a stolen vehicle when they were pulled over by North Carolina State Trooper Ed Lowry in Cumberland County. Corporal David Hathcock responded as backup.
After a struggle and the use of pepper spray, Tilmon Golphin retrieved a rifle and began firing at both officers. Kevin Golphin then used Lowry’s service weapon to shoot both officers again as they lay wounded. Both men died at the scene.
Tilmon Golphin, originally sentenced to death, is also serving life in prison after a resentencing in 2020, according to the report.
