"The law is reason, free from passion." -- Aristotle
In other words the reason we have law at all is so that we bring the same sanctions against the same crimes, and not cherry-pick punishments based on how much or how little we "like" the defendant.
That's very true - most of the other dictators are far, far worse. Re: my Pol Pot comment, which absolutely nobody seemed to get (possibly because society in general has deemed that abject failing as 'forgettable').