"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
— Maya Angelou
Meet The Team
We believe a client's story is far better shown, rather than simply told
Katie Carter
Katie Carter is a fact investigator, mitigation specialist, and sentencing filmmaker with 18 years of experience. She has worked at the Orleans Public Defender, the Capital Defense Project of Southeast Louisiana, and the Federal Public Defender of Southeast Louisiana. She has created mitigation films since 2015, when she met Doug Passon. For the last five years, she has been in private practice in New York, primarily contracting on Federal Public Defender CJA cases in SDNY and EDNY. She has conducted trainings and taught at national conferences and in college settings around the country. She has collaborated with non-profits, academia, artists, designers, writers, researchers, and community gardeners to find collaborative ways to advocate for her clients. In 2024, she self-published a book called Holistic Defense: A Practice, which is a profound look at how we can re-frame investigation and mitigation practice as a healing modality for our clients as well as ourselves. You may learn more about Katie at https://www.carterinvestigations.com.
Doug Passon
Doug Passon is a practicing criminal defense attorney with almost 30 years of litigation experience in state and federal court. He is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, recognized by the Wall Street Journal as a pioneer of sentencing mitigation videos. He has been producing, consulting and teaching on mitigation films for two decades. He is a frequent contributor to NACDL’s The Champion, hosts a popular podcast on sentencing advocacy (www.setforsentencing.com), and he co-authored a book called The Narrative Gym For Law with story expert, Dr. Randy Olson. Doug is also one of premiere attorneys in the U.S. leading the effort to educate and create awareness on the nuances of representing neurodivergent clients. A former federal public defender in Phoenix, Doug has trained more people, made more films, and created more content about mitigation film and sentencing narrative than anyone else in the world. You may learn more about Doug at https://dougpassonlaw.com/.
Noah Friedman-Rudovsky
Noah Friedman-Rudovsky is a visual journalist, documentary filmmaker and mitigation specialist. As a journalist, Noah spent 15 years based in Latin America. He was a frequent contributor to the New York Times’ photo and video coverage in the region, and worked for NGO’s such as UNICEF, Oxfam and the Carter Center. He spent 2 years as the official photographer to Bolivia’s first indigenous President, Evo Morales, and is currently producing a feature-length documentary about Morales and social change in Bolivia. Based in Brooklyn, Noah now works primarily as a mitigation specialist. He focuses on life history investigations for immigrant defendants from Central America. Whenever possible, he uses video and film to tell the stories of his clients. You can learn more about Noah at https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-friedman-rudovsky-b0731738.
Susan Randall
Susan Randall has over 25 years experience working as an investigator and mitigation specialist in Vermont and all over the U.S. and world. She participated in the ACLU’s Scharlette Holdman Mitigation Mentoring Program in 2022 and is a beloved member of the larger mitigation & defense investigation community. She is a licensed investigator in VT & NY and runs VTPrivateye, LLC in Vermont, where she maintains a staff of investigators and college interns. Before becoming an investigator, Susan worked as a journalist & then a documentary filmmaker in New York City. She worked as an associate producer for A&E, BBC, and as a freelance producer. She filed many investigative radio stories for NPR. She loves storytelling and enjoys the work of changing the narrative. She brings a wealth of production & investigation experience to creating mitigation films, and has trained folks in-house and at trainings all over the country. You may learn more out about Susan at https://www.vtprivateye.com/.
Andre Lambertson
Andre Lambertson is an Emmy nominated, award-winning, photojournalist and filmmaker committed to documenting stories of transformation. Lambertson has created photo essays on social issues for magazines, books, foundations, and museums, including Time, National Geographic, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, the Sunday London Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, USA Today, The Ford Foundation, The Smithsonian Museum and The Corcoran Museum. His awards include, five separate Pulitzer Center grants for investigative journalism, The George Soros Foundation Media fellowship, The Webby award, Art For Justice Fund Grantee, National Press Award, The Nation grant and the National Geographic Emergency Grant for Journalists. He co-directed and shot a documentary titled The Whole Gritty City about marching bands that help combat teen street violence in New Orleans, which aired on CBS. The film won a Christopher Award. His last film project, which he shot and produced, is Charm City. The film documented three years of unparalleled violence in Baltimore and the people on the frontlines. The film was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2019, and aired on PBS. He was a cinematographer on Dick Johnson is Dead which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction storytelling. Andre brings more than 25 years of visual storytelling and a highly-developed artistic style and a deep understanding of criminal justice issues and the unique rhythms of urban America. He recently won The Film Independent Amplifier Fellowship sponsored by Netflix. He is currently a finalist for both the Deadline Club and Scripps Howard awards for a short film on Gun violence in NYC. He is in production on two film projects, Jump At The Sun, an episodic docuseries about Blacks and their contributions to the Great Outdoors and Beaumont Blues, a film about Environmental racism in Texas.
