If you are being targeted by the "checked and balanced" system for doing what you believe to be an harmless activity, isn't that enough to lose your faith in it?
I suspect that much is true. It does not follow that it would make you prefer a completely arbitrary system, where the leader could decide you dead at any time. Murdering people without process also pretty much rules out the "harmless activity" part, by every possible meaning of the word.
I think this is mixing up the timelines. He was threatened by LE to life imprisonment for the things he did before he allegedly procured murder. So that can't rule out the "harmless activity" part, because it hadn't happened yet.