Cocke County General Sessions Judge John Bell, who served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army reserves, spent five months in Iraq in 2003 anxd was chief of the Northern Iraqi Office of Judicial Operations.
"They do not have the trial by jury system or the grand jury process but he (Saddam) had virtually all the other rights that Americans have," Bell said.
"I think history will show him to be in the top 10 murderers who ever lived."
Saddam's execution at dawn Saturday in Iraq came 56 days after a court convicted and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail.
Bell said that in Iraq, a defendant has a trial by a panel of judges. During the process to democratize the judicial system, he supervised 112 judges and weeded out incompetent judges, firing 20.
The court system is not patterned after the U.S. judicial system because, "it was not our job to change the judicial system, just to modernize their system," Bell said.
There was an effort, however, to expand the rights of defendants, Bellsaid. Under the former system, for example, defendants did not have the right to remain silent.
"In fact, if you did not speak and defend yourself, that could be used against you," Bell said. "In addition, you had a lawyer only if you could afford one."
In Iraq, the court system provides several court hearings to a defendant, who goes through an arraignment during which a judge decides if there is probable cause to believe the defendant committed the crime.
In the U.S., the case would then go to a grand jury, but in Iraq it is heard by a panel of three judges in a trial.
Bell said that because there is no jury in the Iraqi system, "youdon't have the errors that you might allege as the result of a jury trial.
"The judges know the law and do not consider evidence they should not consider," which in the U.S. often is the basis for an appeal.
Bell said the appeals process in Iraq has the case heard by only one appeals panel.
"It is a streamlined appeal process. While a death penalty case frequently is on appeal for 20 or 25 years in the United States, in Iraq the sentence must be carried out in 30 days," he said.
Bell pointed out in the U.S. judicial system, appeals go though a state system and then through a federal system. One of the complaints he heard from Iraqijudges is that the appeals process in the U.S. takes too long.
