Saddam and the proceduralist confusion

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed earlier today. I actually have an old book from my grad school days called "The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq" by Hanna Batatu, written in 1978. It's a history of Iraq during the first three quarters of the 20th century. Lots of Marx and Weber. Anyway, I bring this up because I first read it right around the time of the first Gulf War, at which point Saddam had been firmly in control of Iraq for more than a decade. Having been published a year before Saddam's rise, however, the book only mentions Saddam in passing, as a deputy party member. (In an extensive table on Ba'ath party members, "Saddam Husain at-Takriti" is listed as an Arab Sunni born in 1937 in Takrit, formerly a secondary school teacher, party worker, deputy chairman, and Revolutionary Command Council member, and having attended law school. He is also described as a son of a peasant from the al-Begat tribal group.)

Leading to and following Saddam's execution, a number of human rights groups have decried the execution (1) as the result of an unfair trial and (2) under the theory that the death penalty is always wrong. (See Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.)

I'm not sure I get either of these points at the theory level. In law, procedure is necessary in order to achieve a fair result -- the discovery of whether or not the defendant is guilty of the crimes of which he or she is accused. Procedure is not sufficient for a fair result, nor is it necessary. It is just a very useful tool to getting there.

With Saddam, of course, the facts are not in dispute. The trial literally could have been run by kangaroos and the question of whether or not Saddam was responsible for ordering the deaths of thousands of people would still have been answered correctly (at least insofar as kangaroos could write out a verdict). So I'm not sure what these groups are getting at on the "unfair trial" point. Are they disputing that he was responsible for the atrocities with which he was accused? If not, why is procedure so important to them? Are they concerned about precedent? (That seems particularly odd, since Iraq has a civil law system that doesn't rely on precedent.) So, if the procedure is secondary, how was the conclusion of the court unfair? (Were the conclusions of the mobs that killed Benito Mussolini and Nicolae Ceausescu "unfair"? They certainly weren't inaccurate...)

The second point just seems like sloppy thinking. A lot of people oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it's irrevocable -- you make a mistake and execute the wrong guy, and you've committed a grave injustice that can't be rectified. But that's clearly not the case here. We all know the guy did it. And since we know that what Saddam did was about as heinous as crimes come (rape rooms, feeding children to dogs in front of their parents, delivering decapitated heads of political dissidents to their wives, etc. -- for a taste, read "Tales of the Tyrant" by Mark Bowden in The Atlantic), to still oppose the death penalty is to oppose the death penalty on all grounds, no matter what the crime and no matter how sure you are of who did it.

Why? The human rights groups offer only platitudes.

“Saddam Hussein was responsible for massive human rights violations, but that can’t justify giving him the death penalty, which is a cruel and inhuman punishment,” said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program. “The test of a government’s commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders,” said Dicker. “History will judge these actions harshly.”

Really? Why is it cruel and inhuman? Why is this a test of a government's commitment to human rights? Has history judged the execution of the Nazis harshly?

All I'm asking for is a thought out philosophical argument here. You know, a little Kant maybe?