system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Wars] Did Imperial commanders routinely execute subordinates without any sort of due process, or was that just one of Vader's personal quirks?
gpt
Sith are their own due process.

Given the discomfort the others demonstrated at the time, and the needs of good military order, it was almost certainly not done as a matter of course.

Understand that the modern military does allow an officer to execute an underling for things like desertion if the situation is sufficiently dire. At least that was true up through Vietnam. If, after the fact, said sanction was deemed unlawful it would be murder.

In a despotism such things happen.

Given that it was a hierarchical despotism there was probably a lot of leeway.

After all, when the Death Star destroyed Alderan the Empire probably didn't remove the imperial troops that were coincidentally stationed there. If all the imperial personnel just started leaving it would have been a tipoff.

So yea, a little in-ranks collateral seems to have been the rule of the day, but it likely wasn't terribly common over the entire cohort.