Deceiving death!

instead of selecting , he deselects , i.e he chooses one slip , and instead of revealing that slip , the untouched slip is revealed ...... wich has death written on it !!! so he escapes death !!!

is this wacky enough ?? [4]

Ah...so that's the case. Then I reframe the solution.

The gladiator is yet to choose a slip. Now he does so, rolls up the slip into a crumple and swallows it. He then asks the emperor to show the other slip to the crowd. Since both slips read "death", but the crowd know that only one reads "death" (the one not eaten, for them), the emperor is forced to concede that the slip the gladiator picked(and so graciously ate) had "freedom" written on it.
Hence the gladiator wins his freedom.

Wacky did u say???
then i am forced to think out of way...

See the gladiator knew the art of hypnotising(PC Sorkar sort of) ..so he hypnotised all present there .Then he alterd both slips by replacing death with "Freedom"...rest need nt be told

Easy.
Two cases.

CASE I : Freedom
Need more be said?

CASE II : Death
Gladiator gets rid of the paper by any method, eg crumpling, tearing, swallowing. He then asks the emperor to show the other paper(freedom) to the crowd. As the emperor is forced to show the paper(the crowd demands an answer), and there is no paper saying death now, the gladiator wins his freedom.
(A lot of the Colosseum decisions were egged on by the crowd. As the crowd cannot see which paper reads what, they will naturally demand to know what paper the gladiator is left with)

@pritish: both the slips read "death"
qwerty's solution seems good enough..:)

gr8 solutions guys
but both are quite similar
i guess this is the exhaustive set of solutions possible

qwerty..u r too good !

Pritish and Qwerty are absolutely correct! :)