Live of Die?

A criminal has stolen something so he goes to court and the judge says he doesn’t know if he should let him live or not. So he pulls out two pieces of paper and on one piece he writes live and on the other he writes die and then he puts them in a hat. Then the judge says tomorrow I will pull a piece of paper out of the hat and if it says live I will let you live and if not i will have to kill you. That night your enemy says that he removed the live paper and put die so it is impossible to pick live and you can’t tell the judges. Yet the criminal ended up living his live but how?