I read this short story in a periodical, I want to say more fantasy than science fiction. A very short story, only a few pages?, and hard for a (then) teenager to read and understand (I read this over 20 years ago). The plot was:
- jackass of a human male lands on an alien planet, somehow kills a native alien or commits a crime with capital punishment
- a machine made of blades and whips shreds native criminals to death in a room meant for execution
- the human, drunk most of the time, tries to convince the aliens to not kill him
- there might have been an outdoor game involved? at least two of the aliens are playing the game while talking about the human's case; stereotypical "two people talking to each other very politely about a situation"
- in the end, the human thinks he has convinced the aliens not to kill him, and they lead him to a room...with the executioner robot waiting "to add his colors" to the walls of the room
- the two aliens outside comment how they thought the human was insane, so they humored him into thinking he was escaping
No idea of when the story story was written, by whom, or in what magazine. Before 2000, at least. The ambiguity of the "science" part makes me think 1970s? Trying to remember this "dumb human" and "kill the human" type of story.