In the United States today, more than 2,500 individuals are serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed when they were 17 years old or younger. Children as young as 13 are among the thousands serving these sentences.

Lost for Life, a new film from director Joshua Rofé, produced by Ted Leonsis, Rick Allen, Mark Jonathan Harris (director of three Academy Award-winning films) and Peter Landesman, tells the stories of these individuals, of their families’ and of the families of victims of juvenile murder. The result of four years of Rofé’s intensive effort, Lost for Life is a searing documentary—one that tackles this contentious issue from multiple perspectives and explores the complexity of the affected individuals’ lives. Lost for Life refuses to give easy answers, but prompts many questions, and forces us to consider what we mean by justice, punishment, mercy, redemption and forgiveness.

And this conversation is vitally important. On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court issued an historic ruling in Miller v. Alabama, holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In arriving at this decision, the Court recognized that children are fundamentally different from adults, and the criminal justice system must treat them accordingly. Brain science has demonstrated that juveniles’ lack of maturity may include a biologically underdeveloped sense of responsibility, which may lead to recklessness, impulsivity, and heedless risk taking.

Prior to this decision, in some states, certain crimes carried with them a mandatory sentence of life-without-parole upon conviction. A judge had no discretion to depart from this automatic sentence. Under Miller, a judge may now consider the characteristics of the offender and the details of the offense before deciding whether to impose a sentence of life-without-parole on a juvenile. While the Supreme Court believed that requiring judges to consider “children’s diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change” would make such sentences “uncommon,” in reality these sentences continue to be handed down on a regular basis. Moreover, because the Court made no specific recommendations concerning how those serving automatic life-without-parole sentences would be resentenced, relief has been hard to come by. In fact, in an apparent attempt to circumvent Miller, a number of governors have indicated their intention to replace mandatory life-without-parole sentences with mandatory prison terms of 65 or 70 years.

The Supreme Court determines whether a particular sentence is cruel and unusual according to “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Thus, the law changes as society’s ideas about what constitutes just punishment change. Still, most people are unaware of how we treat our convicted criminals – or of the emotional trauma sustained by the families of their victims. While these difficult topics are easy to ignore, justice can only be based on common societal answers to key moral questions. For this reason, Lost for Life is an essential film. It is our responsibility to determine the standards of decency for our society. After watching this film, that responsibility becomes impossible to ignore.

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Ted Leonsis Producer

Ted Leonsis is the founder, chairman and majority owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which comprises three professional sports teams – the (NHL), the (NBA) and the (WNBA) – as well as Verizon Center. The company also operates Kettler Capitals Iceplex (the Capitals training facility and front office) and ’s Patriot Center.

In 2008 Leonsis founded SnagFilms, which enables online audiences to find, watch, share and support thousands of documentary films. SnagFilms grew out of Leonsis’ experience as a producer of such award-winning documentary films. He produced Nanking, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the Documentary Editing Award. It has won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award. His second production, Kicking It, premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and aired on ESPN. A third documentary produced by Leonsis, A Fighting Chance, aired on ESPN in fall 2010, and his newest production, Lost for Life, will screen in the AFI Docs and Nantucket film festivals in June 2013. In addition to being the Internet’s leading site for watching and sharing nonfiction films, SnagFilms owns indieWIRE, the leading news, information and networking site for independent-minded filmmakers, the industry and moviegoers alike.

While working on documentaries and establishing SnagFilms, Leonsis coined and championed the term “filmanthropy.” It is his unique way of combining film and philanthropy, raising the awareness of important issues with the goal of promoting change by increasing volunteerism and activating charitable giving.

Leonsis retired from active management of AOL in 2006, where during the previous 13 years he held a number of senior positions, including vice chairman and president. Since his retirement from active management at AOL, Leonsis retains the position of vice chairman emeritus. At a May 2010 ceremony celebrating AOL’s 25th anniversary, one of the buildings on AOL’s Virginia campus was renamed the Leonsis Creative Center in his honor.

Recently Leonsis was chairman of Revolution Money, which provides secure payments through an Internet-based platform and in 2009 was sold to American Express; Leonsis is now on the board of directors at American Express. He is currently chairman of Clearspring Technologies, the largest online content sharing network, which connects publishers, services and advertisers to audiences on the social web. Over the past 20 years he has been a board member or early investor in a number of successful technology companies, from to Groupon.

Leonsis’ book The Business of Happiness: 6 Secrets To Extraordinary Success In Work And Life was published in February 2010 and quickly became a bestseller. Previous books by Leonsis include Blue Magic: The People, Power, and Politics Behind The IBM Personal Computer (1988.)

In addition to serving on the board of directors of American Express, where he is chairman of the Technology and Innovation Committee, Leonsis sits on the board of publicly held companies such as Nutrisystem and Rosetta Stone. He also serves on the Technology Committee of the board of directors for Alcatel-Lucent. He also serves on the board of directors of his alma mater, . Leonsis has numerous business interests and investments, including the following companies: Algentis, GridPoint, Triporati, Mahalo.com, MediaBank, MobilePosse, ObjectVideo, SB Nation, TidalTV and Zedge.

Leonsis is a committed philanthropist and is actively involved with numerous charities, including Best Buddies, D.C. Central Kitchen, See Forever Foundation, Street Soccer USA, Venture Philanthropy Partners, YouthAIDS and others through the work of the Leonsis Foundation.

Early in his career Leonsis was the founder of several new media companies, including Redgate Communications, a pioneering “new media company” – a phrase Leonsis is crediting with coining – that in 1993 was the first company acquired by AOL. He was also the founder of six personal computer magazines and worked on the introduction of the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh. He co-invented a successful board game called “Only in New York” and served as a marketing executive with Harris Corp and Wang Laboratories.

He once served as mayor of Orchid, Fla. Among his many honors, Leonsis has been named Washington’s Businessman of the Year, a Washingtonian of the Year, one of the 20 most influential people in sports, one of America’s most creative executives and a top 10 entrepreneur of the year. Leonsis blogs daily at TedsTake.com. Originally from , N.Y., and later, Lowell, Mass., he now lives in McLean, Va., with his wife and two children.

Rick Allen Producer

Rick Allen has run successful companies in nearly every form of media, and helped to develop or extend some of the country’s most prestigious brands. Rick is the CEO of SnagFilms which he helped to found with Ted Leonsis. The two produced Kicking It, which screened at Sundance, Tribeca and other film festivals and was aired by ESPN; for the film and their work on homelessness, Leonsis, Allen and colleagues received the 2009 Stewart B. McKinney Award from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. In 2010, Leonsis and Allen produced A Fighting Chance, which aired on ESPN in November, 2010. In 2013, they produced Lost for Life, a documentary that will screen in June 2013 at the AFI Docs festival in Washington, D.C. and the Nantucket Film Festival. Allen previously was President and CEO of Sporting News, the country’s oldest sports media company, leading a revitalization that saw it named twice to Adweek’s annual “Hot List” as a top-10 media property. Earlier, he served as President and CEO of the for-profit arm of the National Geographic Society, responsible for television and film; interactive products, websites and e-commerce; maps; travel; retail; catalog; and consumer products. Under his leadership, the National Geographic Channel was launched and became one of the fastest growing cable channels in recent history. Before coming to National Geographic, Rick was a senior executive at Discovery Communications, parent of the Discovery Channel, where he extended the company’s brand into filmed entertainment, education, technology and retail. He also served in the White House as a Deputy Assistant to President Clinton, helping to establish AmeriCorps (the domestic Peace Corps). Before his White House service, Allen was CEO of a privately- held group of 35 companies based in Los Angeles. He has written and lectured widely, and been active in civic affairs particularly dealing with education, including service with the advisory boards to the California State Board of Education and the Southern California Association of Governments. He has been a member of the Dartmouth Alumni Council, serving on its Enrollment and Admissions Committee, and as an elected member of the Nominating and Alumni Trustee Search Committee. Rick lives in Potomac, Maryland with his wife and three sons.

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Mark Jonathan Harris, B.A. Producer

Professor Mark Jonathan Harris is an Academy-Award winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and novelist. Among the many documentaries he has written, produced and/or directed are The Redwoods, a documentary made for the Sierra Club to help establish a redwood National Park, which won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary (1968). The Long Way Home (1997), a film made for the Simon Wiesenthal Center about the period immediately following the Holocaust won the Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary (1997). Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport was produced for Warner Bros. and also won an Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary (2000).

Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003), an HBO documentary he wrote on slavery in America, was nominated for an Emmy for Non-fiction Special. In 2007, he produced Darfur Now, which was nominated by The National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics Association for best documentary of the year. The film went on to win an NAACP Image Award.

His latest project as a writer is a feature length documentary about the involvement of doctors and psychologists in the torture of detainees in U.S. military prisons. He is also the Principal Investigator on a three-year project to create a website and film about best practices in treating autism.

In 2010 the International Documentary Association honored him with their Scholarship and Preservation Award.

In addition to filmmaking, Harris is also a journalist and has published short stories and five novels for children. He has taught filmmaking at the USC School of Cinematic Arts since 1983.

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