As Consul he had caused certain Roman citizens to be executed as conspirators, in the teeth of a law which enacted that no Roman citizen should be condemned to die except by a direct vote of the people.

It had certainly become a maxim of the constitution of the Republic that a citizen should not be made to suffer death except by the voice of the people.

The Valerian, the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect.
Now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of Lentulus and the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in Rome in the affair of Catiline.

Their death had been decreed by the Senate, and the decree of the Senate had been carried out by Cicero; but no decree of the Senate had the power of a law.

In spite of that decree the old law was in force; and no appeal to the people had been allowed to Lentulus.
But there had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been supposed to override the Valerian and Porcian laws.