The state’s highest court today upheld the convictions of a Dorchester man who helped to murder a teenage mother and the unborn baby she carried more than 10 years ago, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The Supreme Judicial Court’s unanimous 11-page decision ensures that LORD HAMPTON (D.O.B. 1/3/79) will continue to serve the two life sentences he incurred in 2004 when a Suffolk Superior Court jury found him guilty of the first-degree murders of 14-year-old Chauntae Jones and the eight-month-old fetus inside of her. Jones and her baby died on or about Sept. 28, 1999, in a shallow grave near the site of the former Boston State Hospital. Another man, KYLE BRYANT (D.O.B. 10/23/81) of Mattapan, was acquitted of those same offenses at a separate trial.

“It’s a fact of the criminal justice system that convictions are appealed,” Conley said. “We’re prepared for that. We try cases with the highest ethical standards and we defend those cases with an unparalleled Appellate Division. This was one of the most awful crimes in this city’s history, and this perpetrator deserves every day of his sentence.”

Finding that a lower court judge did not err by allowing Hampton’s pre-arrest statement to police into evidence, the high court wrote that “There is no justification to suppress evidence lawfully obtained and having no nexus to the denial of the defendant’s statutory right to use the telephone. His statutory right to use a telephone did not accrue until he was formally arrested.”

The court also held that the trial judge acted appropriately in dismissing a juror who had discussed the case in violation of her instructions – and who allegedly failed to disclose criminal convictions in Florida and pending felony charges in Massachusetts.

“The judge’s discharge of Juror A was not based on that juror’s failure to disclose his criminal history, but his failure to comply with the court order that jurors not discuss the case with other jurors,” Justice Francis X. Spina wrote for the high court. “It is well established that the judge had discretion to discharge Juror A ‘in the best interests of justice’ … and we are satisfied that the judge acted within her discretion in removing Juror A.”

Assistant District Attorney Helle Sachse of Conley’s Appellate Division argued in support of the conviction. Former Assistant District Attorney David Meier tried the case. Michael Coffey has been the DA’s victim-witness advocate on the case since its inception.