This line of reasoning leads to Richelieu’s six lines, where everyone is guilty of something, so you can punish anyone at any time for any reason: process crimes make for a much more plausible pretext to go after a target than any “intrinsically bad” thing.
If so, it’s a very noncentral example. The explanation for process crimes is that they are much easier to prove than the regular crimes they lead to. But the whole reason that people use trumped-up process is that proving that someone trumped up the process is difficult.
This line of reasoning leads to Richelieu’s six lines, where everyone is guilty of something, so you can punish anyone at any time for any reason: process crimes make for a much more plausible pretext to go after a target than any “intrinsically bad” thing.
Trumped-up process would itself be a process crime.
If so, it’s a very noncentral example. The explanation for process crimes is that they are much easier to prove than the regular crimes they lead to. But the whole reason that people use trumped-up process is that proving that someone trumped up the process is difficult.