User blog comment:Hippogriff12/The Scarcity of Racists in Skyrim/@comment-5302371-20120728161339/@comment-5135631-20120731173249

In Ulfric's eyes, Balgruuf was already with the Empire by the time of Helgen, so to him it wasn't a matter of respecting neutrality, it was a matter of stomping the snake before it could bite him, I would do the same in his position.

A good point on what it may have seemed like to Tullius, but the man clearly showed no respect for due process and was too lazy and inconsiderate to even consult the evidence in place, so he just decided to have my head. He just decided that he was too above me to consider my claim to innocence. He thought he was better than me. He thought he could murder me without a trial. Does this, to you, seem like a man who is in any fit state to govern the armies of his Emperor's oldest and arguably most powerful foreign province, a man who doesn't even believe in justice, but is only involved in his high level job for fame and wealth?

As for your first point, that would depend largely on where the ambush took place and what I personally thought of the prisoner's story.