The Daily Dose/March 15, 2022
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
WHAT’S A FEW DECADES AMONGST FRIENDS: Fifty-seven years after being sentenced to death, Japan’s Iwao Hakamada has been given a new trial. He had been condemned for a 1966 mass murder and it is strongly suspected some of the evidence used against him was fabricated.
Fly In The Ointment: Hakamada eventually confessed, a confession he has long maintained was coerced. He spent 48 years on death row before a court suspended his execution in 2014 and ordered both a retrial and his release. That ruling was eventually overturned, though in 2020 Japan’s supreme court ordered the lower court to “reconsider” the ruling, which led to Monday’s order for a retrial.
Dry, Technical Matter: Hakamada is recognized as the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. Though out of prison since 2014, his death sentence was suspended and not vacated, and he remains under sentence of death.
More Dry, Technical Matter: The Japanese death penalty system makes the US system look downright humane, which isn’t easy to do. In Japan, you’re convicted and sentenced to death, go through some appeals, and once your conviction is upheld you are left to wait because in Japan you are not given an execution date.
We Are Not Making This Up: On Japan’s death row, they come and get those scheduled to die in the morning. You are given some time to make a will and pray to whomever you feel will do you the most good and then you’re taken to die. Your family will be notified later. This means, of course, that you will spend decades not knowing if you are waking up for the last time.
USA! USA! In the US, at least you’re issued a death warrant that has an actual execution date on it. This isn’t a whole lot better – and our death row conditions are as bad as theirs – but at least you wake up every morning not having to worry whether or not this is your last day.
The Bottom Line/Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: The US, and probably everyone else, has executed innocent people, which is reason enough to shut the system down immediately and for good. To think that everyone who has made that last walk over the years was guilty is folly. It is time to end the death penalty.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow actually plays some basketball. Today’s Diary.
…the next thing anyone knows we were playing some of the worst one-on-one hoops since Mr Naismith put up the first peach basket…It was probably similar to watching Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles go at it and after a minute or two we decided we’d be here all nite if we waited for one of us to make five baskets and the rules were modified to first basket wins.
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates, after the February Revolution, which followed losses in World War I and the Russo-Japanese War. Later in the month, the royal family was placed under house arrest and the family would be executed in July 2018. Nicholas had succeeded his father Alexander III in 1894 and his abdication ended 304 years of Romanov family rule in Russia.
In 1958 – Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Bearcats establishes a new NCAA tournament record for most points in a game in a 97-62 win over Arkansas in the Midwest Region’s 3rd-place game. Robertson had 56 points, breaking the record of 48 established by Hal Lear in 1956, Robertson’s record was broken by Bill Bradley of Princeton (58) in 1965 and the record is now 61, by Austin Car of Notre Dame in 1970. The NCAA discontinued regional 3rd-place games after the 1975 tournament.
In 1980 – Willie Nelson is at #1 on Billbord’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Singles chart – for the second and final consecutive week with My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. The song also went #1 country in Canada, peaked at #44 on the Hot 100, and was Billboard’s 13th-biggest country song of the year. It was the twelfth of 45 Top 10 country hits for Nelson and his sixth of 24 #1s, totals which include guest appearances and collaborations.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics was the first to score 50 points in an NBA playoff game, doing so on March 21, 1953, against the Syracuse Nationals in the Eastern Division semifinals.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Who was the first Russian tsar of the Romanov dynasty? – Answer next time!
