Yep. Thats how we usually handle war criminals,and that might actually have happened if not for two reasons.
1. The Bush administration had come out strongly against the international war crimes tribunal, ostensibly worried that the court would be unable to deal with politically motivated charges against US nationals. So to preserve its own integrity it had to go against international justice.
2. The decision to hand the trial over to the Iraqi courts which had not had any experience with basic concepts of justice for several decades.
In the end we expect overthrown dictators to either escape into hiding, make a deal, or pay the ultimate price. Those were his options. He ran out of cash and allies and that was that. The trial just served to delay his ritual sacrifice long enough to be acceptable by western standards.
In the end Sadam was above justice, just as surely as if he had escaped to a new life in Bolivia, thats what bothers me, not that he died, but the circumstances.