Entries by Maya Tello

In the April 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sherrerd Hartness, a writer and speak­er who advo­cates for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and co-vic­­­tims of mur­der. In 1977, Ms. Hartness’s sis­ter, Carlotta, was killed — an expe­ri­ence that shaped her under­stand­ing of the long-term emo­tion­al impact of vio­lent crime on fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Her work now focus­es on rais­ing aware­ness about the needs of co-victims and…

On April 16, 2026, Singapore exe­cut­ed 46-year-old Omar bin Yacob Bamadhaj for import­ing 1,009 grams of cannabis, an offense that car­ries a manda­to­ry death sen­tence under the country’s Misuse of Drugs Act, which impos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for import­ing more than 500 grams. His exe­cu­tion marks the eighth car­ried out for drug-relat­ed offens­es in 2026, already exceed­ing half of the fif­teen drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions record­ed in all of 2025. Although the court determined…

In April 2025, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) released Immature Minds in a​“Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, which found that “[a] mean­ing­ful exam­i­na­tion of all the evi­dence sug­gests that 18‑, 19- and 20-year-olds are equal­ly deserv­ing as those under 18 to be exclud­ed from death penal­ty eli­gi­bil­i­ty.” Included in the report was an analy­sis of trends in sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tions of defen­dants age 18 to 20 based on twen­ty years of data, from the…