Really? It's been me the whole time here. Maybe you're thinking of someone else. Maybe someone with some loony religious notions about pain or something. You gotta watch out for those types.
And if there is no set procedure, there is no real due process in any meaningful sense...
And that's why I'm just a little bit hesitant to sign on to your description of due process. It leaves so many avenues for playing fast and loose with the rules. Any government can then say, "Yeah, but that's our rule!" I'd have to agree with what Ned said in #46. There's an entire paragraph from that post which I think sums it up pretty well, which I'll post here, hoping he doesn't mind:
The problem that I have with this interpretation is that I don't think that people went to all of the trouble of adopting the Fourteenth Amendment just to make sure that state judges complied with the directions of state legislatures. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." I believe that state legislatures were intended to fall within the scope of the term "State" and that the due process clause obligates the State (including the state legislature) to comply with some minimum standards of fairness when disposing of a person's life, liberty or property. I do not believe, for example, that a state can, consistent with the due process clause, execute or imprison people without trials even if the state legislature enacts statutes providing for executions and imprisonment without trial. I firmly believe that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted as a limitation on state laws and practices with the understanding that states would thereafter be held to some national standards of "due process of law." The real debate concerns just what those national minimum due process standards should be.
But what "due process" is isn't universal among all societies because the procedure isn't the same everywhere. Here, if those elements guaranteed to you by the Constitution are omitted - the judge declares that they'll just skip the trial and throw a rope over a tree branch for you - then in the context of our procedures, your right to due process has been violated because the formal procedure has not been followed. Somewhere else, if the method is to have you walk on hot coals, and you don't get to walk on hot coals, then you haven't received due process under that system.
In it's broadest, most general sense, due process implies that there exists some formal procedure for resolving legal disputes (but does not say what that procedure is or should be in a universal way), and that this formal procedure is followed in your particular case. It's procedure versus ad hockery - if they ignore the procedure, whatever it is, then you have not received due process. If it is followed, then you have. But like I said, it only implies that a formal method exists, not what that method should be. Here we have an elaborate and formal procedure, with many elements and layers. Elsewhere, the procedure may not be so formal or so complex. Here, "due process" has a specific meaning that does not apply elsewhere - in many countries, you can forget that idea of not being forced to testify against yourself. That's not a part of the process there, so being forced into testifying against yourself in some other country is not a violation of due process by their standards.
"Due process" just means that the procedure was followed, whatever it is. The fact that the procedure varies so radically from place to place practically guarantees that "due process" doesn't have a universal meaning beyond what I've laid out - that is, until we have a universal method of dispute resolution, anyway.