It's also designed to teach someone a lesson. Well fine. But if the punishment is to kill someone, what good is it that the dead person learned his lesson?
Yes, you are correct; If Fredo wasn't Michael's brother he would not have been allowed to live as long as he did.
But if he wasn't Michael's brother, he wouldn't have been in the position of being used by Roth in the first place.
Oh, and when I used the term "inadvertant", I meant like a slip of the tongue, as in "Old Johnny knows these places like the back of his hand."
Fredo knew that helping Roth in the Tahoe plot was wrong. He was just too stupid to realize what Roth really had up his sleeve (altho Turnbull, to name one member, would argue that he knew it was gonna be a hit).
But, IMO, he had learned his lesson and would have been a lot more careful in the future.
