These were no more legal executions than were the "disappearances" that haunted Argentina or the mass killings of civilians by military forces in Kosovo. These people had their rights stripped en masse by decree and were then killed by decree, with not even a bogus legal process or crime to point to. There is no real point of comparison with legal execution, because there was no trial and not so much as even a bogus opportunity for the condemned to challenge his fate. The fact that these were government-sanctioned did nothing to protect the guilty when, after the war ended, they were tried and convicted for their crimes against humanity.

"Robbins’s claim fails because the Hobbs Act does not apply when the National Government is the intended beneficiary of the allegedly extortionate acts."