RALEIGH -- The lawyer for Lawrence Lovette, one of two men convicted in the 2008 shooting death of UNC Chapel Hill student body president Eve Carson, says his client would have approached his case differently if he'd known he had a chance at parole. Keat Wiles told the state Court of Appeals on Thursday that Lovette's lack of knowledge, that parole could be a possibility, amounted to a due process violation.

Wiles said, "Due process, as the court knows, has two elements: notice and an opportunity to be heard. And Mr. Lovette did not have notice of the sentencing scheme that he would be facing when he was charged with first-degree murder."

Lovette was convicted of first-degree murder and automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in December, 2011. That sentence was reconsidered last year because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that offenders under 18 at the time of a crime can't receive life sentences without parole unless mitigating circumstances are weighed. Lovette was 17 when Carson was killed in March, 2008, his Court of Appeals decision could take several weeks or months.