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Speaking of show trials, the one for the haditha massacre that had the ringleader openly admit he did it, saying it was to protect his men (not sure how going door to door murdering families does that), only saw the vast majority, if not all of them, get a paycut a reduction in rank; one person got like a few months jail time, and the families of the murdered got a payout of $1000 dollars per murdered family member.
A show trial telling the world America can get away with anything we want.
Not to mention all the people in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo who got scooped up off the street and got a military tribunal if they got anything at all.
How can it be an exhibition of justice against terrorism when the terrorism charges have already been dropped?
Because the defense lawyers are communists who hate freedom and Christian values
Woke Judge! 
(But actually, the prosecution are the ones who hate freedom. God, I hate America so much.)
What's wrong with a show trial? One that serves the purpose of showing the public what this person did and how the state will respond?
What they object to is the fact that the crimes they committed were done under a system that allowed them. It's not fair. They followed the rules.
Well, typically, the Stalinist show trials are called such because a trotskyist group held trials for the individuals in absecentia afterwards that supposedly absolved them of their crimes, by throwing out all of their confessional testimony as being made under duress (which tbf it probably was). Literally holding show trials.
That said, what the trotskyist group failed to do, of course, is place it in context to the kinds of trials that were taking place in the U.S. where they were based out of, was understand that what the USSR did was exactly the same level of evidence and scrutiny that was done in basically every other country for treason. The more I read about these old Trotskyist groups, the more I realize that they held the USSR to an impossible standard, while actively undermining it's foreign policy in the countries they lived in, while not holding those countries to the same standards as the USSR in terms of them offering direct assistance. Basically, they were willing to do critical support for capitalist countries, but not for countries that called themselves communist. The worst kind of schemers and backbiters.
I'm actually against that kind of show trial. You need a reasonable code for what constitutes admissible evidence, and to have admissible evidence to show. And I am a strong proponent of the fundamental concept of innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof should always be on the accuser. The state should not be allowed to perform a legal proceeding which goes "here is the crime committed, here is the state response" without providing evidence that the accused did indeed commit the crime.
If you have evidence, to the normative standard of evidence used in the country's courts, by all means, make a huge public spectacle of the trial. I'm all for that. Just be prepared for an independent judiciary to possibly find the prosecution in the wrong in front of the entire country if you choose to make public spectacles of important trials.
Why should the judiciary be independent of the democratic government? Why did you take my comment that there shouldn't be evidence?
Why should the judiciary be independent of the democratic government?
When the judge and the prosecution work for the same people, it can cause conflicts of interest, or the appearance of such, and make it seem like the judiciary is not there to be objective and determine the facts. Even the appearance of impropriety is a problem. Yes, how exactly to appoint judges then does become a point of debate, but it's hard to expect them to be objective if the state can retaliate against them for ruling against it, obviously as such or behind the scenes.
Why did you take my comment that there shouldn't be evidence?
It's... kind of a stereotype of "show trials" that evidence is often... debatable at best.
When the judge and the prosecution work for the same people, it can cause conflicts of interest, or the appearance of such, and make it seem like the judiciary is not there to be objective and determine the facts.
So there should be two governments just for the sake of having judges and prosecutors coming from separate entities? And which government should be supreme? Who answers to whom?
Why do you think an adversarial court system is the best in the first place?
it's hard to expect them to be objective if the state can retaliate against them for ruling against it, obviously as such or behind the scenes.
What do you mean 'rule against' the state? Isn't the judge an agent of the state? Do you mean a judge should have independence such that they can contradict their mandate?
What I mean is just that there should be rules and procedures in place to prevent situations where the state wants someone found guilty, the evidence and the letter of the law doesn't support that, but the judge feels compelled to rule against the defendant anyway out of fear of retaliation. Innocent until proven guilty doesn't work unless the state needs reasonable evidence to declare guilt, and someone in charge of determining that whose job is to weigh the evidence and interpret the law as written, not blindly agree with law enforcement agencies. And I know that a lot of Western legal systems today are nowhere near perfect, but I do think "innocent until proven guilty" is a concept we should keep after the revolution.
I ask questions to make you think about your position and the objections I have with it and you just ignore them to restate your opinion unaffected.
When the judge and the prosecution work for the same people
They ultimately always do though, just with more or less extra steps.
You make a good point, and that is a problem that's ultimately very difficult to get around. It's hard to figure out how to protect the judiciary from retaliation such that people who aren't guilty will be found not guilty on the evidence and facts and the judge won't be afraid of retaliation for ruling against the prosecution, without giving them ultimate power and creating stupid loopholes. But ultimately I think we may have a clash of principles here, where most communists tend to prefer that the guilty be caught and punished even at the expense of the innocent, while I believe it's better to let a few possibly guilty folks go free, than lock up or execute one innocent person. (Also, I think show trials are stupid and the government ought to be humiliated if they hold a massive spectacle of punishing someone for an egregious crime but the evidence doesn't hold up. And that person can't be acquitted on the facts if the judge is afraid of reprisals.)
make it seem like the judiciary is not there to be objective and determine the facts
Objectivity is a myth and it's purpose is usually depoliticization. I don't necessarily say this to say a judicial system should never be independent, but I certainly wouldn't use objectivity as a reason for why it should. Separating politics from law or justice is not possible and not desirable unless deception is the goal.
Objectivity is also a very fallible standard for determining truth. Ultimately, justice must be in the context of revolution not in the context of "objectivity." There must be a political ether for justice to rest on.
I suppose I'm just very much caught up in Western justice systems that uphold objectivity as the ultimate goal of a courtroom. That state the point of a trial is to determine the facts of a case and have an objective judicial body pronounce a verdict. I'm not really familiar with other approaches that are still fair to all sides and compatible with "innocent until proven guilty", which is a principle I find extremely important.
luigi mangione has an excellent show trial, and we're getting three more seasons
A foreign ambassador (pretty sure it was the US) was at the Moscow trials and said that there was nothing phony about them and that the suspects did not show any sign of torture. Their admissions on the other hand were completely made up most likely to make the trials look like show trials
It's the same logic as with election and everything else, bad authoritarian country by definition can't have properly functioning democracy, law etc.
