New documentary sheds light on U.S. ‘juvenile lifers’
Jacob Ind got the idea of killing his mother and stepfather, at the tender age of 15, from a friend who came over to his Colorado house one day and remarked how his mom was such a “bitch”.
Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper, both 16 at the time, took inspiration from the Wes Craven horror movie “Scream” when they stabbed and killed their high school classmate Cassie Jo Stoddart in small-town Idaho in 2006.
And film-maker Joshua Rofe was prompted to make a documentary about them and other American juvenile offenders sentenced to life imprisonment without parole when he met a judge from Florida at a friend’s birthday party.
“He was clearly conflicted” about putting a 15-year-old killer of a taxi driver behind bars forever, said Rofe, whose disturbing film “Lost for Life” premieres Saturday at the American Film Institute’s AFI Docs festival.
“The girl that he sentenced to life without parole had the same name as his daughter. She was about the same age, and he said he often wondered if there was a better option,” he told AFP.
“That was it. Right there, I knew I wanted to make a film about that.”
The US Supreme Court ruled in June 2012 that mandatory life without parole for a minor convicted of murder — the law in 29 states at the time — was a form of “cruel and unusual