would it be superfluous to wonder whether you can see the distinction between someone (i) inadvertantly dying of natural causes, and (ii) being executed? (hint: criminal procedure can only prevent one of these deaths. try and guess which one! i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised)

anyway, i can see you’re just being obtuse now. as a parting shot, try and guess who wrote this:

Every Kurd I know was eager to see [the Anfal campaign] properly aired in court and placed on the record for all time, with its chief perpetrator on hand to be confronted with his deeds. Instead, the said chief perpetrator was snatched from the dock—in the very middle of his trial—and thrown as a morsel to one of the militias. This sort of improvised “offing” is not even a parody of the serious tribunal that history demands.

http://www.slate.com/id/2156776/pagenum/all/

Ken Lay’s conviction was vacated when he died before sentencing. I could not imagine your scenario would be worse.

Not with respect to this issue, as far as I can see. What happens when the defendant dies of natural causes during a criminal investigation or a trial? And why can’t the same thing happen if instead the defendant is executed during a criminal investigation or a trial?

nice try, dan.

They’ll be heard. In all of Saddam’s crimes, including the ones currently at trial, there are other defendants, and the trials will move forward.

Well, I’m as far from an expert on these things as one can get, but I really don’t see why not. My impression, for example, is that many serial killers are executed while still suspects—perhaps even with enough evidence for an arrest—in numerous additional murders. If nothing else, it would set a terrible precedent to allow a murderer to escape the death penalty for a prolonged period simply by being also implicated in even more heinous crimes.

(Of course, if we’re talking about the ninth circuit here, then all bets are off—there’s simply no telling what wacky ruling those guys will come up with next….)

…

But again, I consider that to be the exact opposite of a procedural complaint. Politics and history argue for a full accounting for Saddam Hussein’s crimes, but procedural fairness requires that he be tried only for those crimes for which sufficient proof of guilt can be presented at trial.

nice strawman, but this wasn’t a case of saddam only being tried on charges in which a conviction was assured.

a trial of saddam and other officials for directing the anfal campaign against the kurds, in which saddam was charged with genocide, amongst other crimes, was ongoing at the time of his death. several days of harrowing evidence from survivors and forensics experts had been taken. i don’t think there’s anyone sane on earth who did not think saddam’s guilt a foregone conclusion.

do you seriously contend that an american appeals court (the standard you’ve chosen to use) would allow an execution to proceed where the damned was at the time of his scheduled death, defending charges of genocide?

Fair enough—if what Josh Marshall meant by “pretend mumbojumbo”, and what BI meant by “kangaroo court”, was that the conduct of Saddam Hussein’s execution did not pay sufficient respect to Sunni sectarian sensibilities, then I’ll concede that their thinking isn’t merely US-centric, and apologize for assuming that they were alluding to legal aspects of the trial and sentencing.

The carrying out of a sentence is also part of judicial procedure.

As I explained, I did find articles, such as the first one you linked to, about Iraqis complaining that Saddam Hussein wasn’t tried for a much broader set of crimes. But again, I consider that to be the exact opposite of a procedural complaint. Politics and history argue for a full accounting for Saddam Hussein’s crimes, but procedural fairness requires that he be tried only for those crimes for which sufficient proof of guilt can be presented at trial.

The second article is an interesting one—thanks for pointing it out. (For some reason it didn’t show up in my searches—even of the NYT specifically.) It’s hard to tell, actually, what the Iraqis it quotes are objecting to “when they speak of “death squads” and “behaving in the same way [as Saddam Hussein]”—the quotations are shorn of context, amidst heavy editorializing by the reporter. They might be objecting to a lack of procedural fairness in the trial—or they might be complaining strictly about what they perceive as the anti-Sunni symbolism incorporated into the execution. It would have been nice if Ms. Tavernise had let the Iraqis in question speak a little more for themselves—then we would have known for sure what, exactly, angered them about Saddam Hussein’s treatment.

Again, it’s possible that one of Iraqis’ main concerns regarding Saddam Hussein’s fate is whether his trial was procedurally fair. I just haven’t seen any persuasive evidence to that effect—and I’ve seen lots of evidence suggesting that their reactions are dominated by the political and historical (rather than judicial) significance of his execution.

It took me all of one minute to find this and this.

You weren’t looking.

For you to be wrong, all I need do is demonstrate either (a) you can’t know what you claim or (b) what you claim is manifestly false. I can then throw in additional (and weaker) normative reasons about© the wrongness of how information is being spread in Iraq or (d) the objective invalidity of the trial both in principle and from any clear account of the recent historical record.

Saddam Hussein was a real son of a gun. A lot of people feel undermined because they openly professed support for a war where their government so very clearly misled them. I am proud to say I didn’t support either Gulf War. Supporters of the conflict now undermined instead claim that, well, the war is still justifiable but handled wrong. What I love here is that instead of the US government manipulating facts that such persons can recite like willing parrots, these people manipulate facts on their own—-they are happily complicit in this horrible conflict. We are told now that Iraqis really support the conflict and that they have no problems with Saddam Hussein’s trial. Rubbish.

Where do you get your news? The New York Post?