[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

The state can already kill you without a trial. The state can kill you for whatever reason it desires to already.

Not without any kind of a hearing it can't. If someone acting in the name of the state does so, say a police officer, they are subject to arrest.

[dheretic]

Fortunately we have enough good people in government that he/she would be put on trial for such an offense. However as chariman mao once said, all political authority comes form the barrel of a gun. One need only look at the PRC/USSR to see that that saying is very true. With sufficient numbers of corrupt people in power, that nightmare would indeed come to pass. The only thing besides decent people in the bureacracy keeping that from coming to pass is the fear of a popular revolution. Political authority in our country is only recognized as being in the hands of the public because the only society with a civilian population more heavily armed than us, is Switzerland.