Afzal Guru hanged: Should we celebrate?

Throughout human history, capital punishment was used as a tool to punish the criminals, and as a deterrent, for crimes ranging from treason to murder, from religious crimes to rape, adultery, etc.  

Various methods were used to kill the convicted.  Some of these methods are:  decapitation (removing the head with an axe or sword), disembowelment (cutting the abdomen to remove the intestine), impalement (piercing a person using pole through length of the body), execution by burning (tying the person to a stake and burning till death), dismemberment (killing a person by pulling out legs and hands), crushing (by placing stones or using elephants), sawing (hanging the person upside down and then sawing the person starting at the groin), crucifixion (person is nailed to a wooden cross and left to die), boiling to death (by immersing in boiling oil or water), flaying (death by removing the skin of the body), slow slicing (removing parts of the body slowly with a knife), or blowing from a gun (a head blown from cannon).

Medieval England 'hanged, drawn and quartered' its convicted criminals eliciting cheers and applause from the crowds.   This method is described by Wiki as:

Convicts were fastened to a wooden panel and drawn by horse to the place of execution where they were hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered (chopped into four pieces). Their remains were often displayed in prominent places across the country.

One would think that such an event would make people cringe, make people nauseated, make people turn away from the gory spectacle.  One would think that such a method would bring tears to the people, not the applause, and yet, it seems to be a base human trait – to celebrate such public executions.  During the ancient and medieval times, public executions drew large crowds.  When the convict was executed the crowds cheered and celebrated.  

Crowds gathered in huge numbers to witness public executions.  Tickets were sold for viewing.  Vendors sold food and drinks.  People bought souvernirs.  It was like modern-day concert or carnival.  

Many kingdoms regularly scheduled public executions to draw people’s attention away from their woes, away from gloomy economy ailing the country, or take their attention away from a scandal, etc.   And it looks like gladiator games and public executions helped the kings stay in power distracting the people from real issues. 

Baying for blood of the criminal seems to be a base human instinct.  Humans want blood, they want revenge, they want to see the criminal suffer for his crimes.  And they take pleasure in awarding capital punishment to their criminals.   Seeking death sentence is a common demand in most criminal cases.   In modern times, the governments have taken over the monopoly on awarding the death sentence, thereby regulating it.  Some modern societies, like contemporary Indians, demand death sentence, and the government schedules these executions at regular intervals to satisfy the ‘collective conscience’ of its millions who want blood.

Right now, about 58 countries continue to practice capital punishment while 97 countries have abolished it.  Most countries who abolish capital punishment believe that no jury, no court decision, no evidence is infallible.  They also believe that killing another human being by a sane society is not justified even when that criminal has committed the gravest of the crimes. 

India is one of the 58 countries which continues to give capital punishment to its convicts.  

Recently, when Ajmal Kasab, the terrorist who attacked the city of Mumbai killing many innocent people, was hanged, Indians came out into streets to celebrate.  They fired crackers on the streets, and every almost every leader, religious or political, congratulated the country or the government for carrying it out.

Today, Afzal Guru was hanged for his allegedly complicit involvement in an attack on Indian Parliament. 

The Supreme Court verdict which sentenced Afzal Guru to the death sentence read:

The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender.

The question I ask is, can we mete out punishment to satisfy collective conscience of a society?  Do we award punishment according to the law, or according to collective opinion of a majority? Isn't the modern penal and judicial system designed to remove that bias, the bias of emotive society, or the saddened politician, or collective will of a group of people?
 
We in India continue to hand out death sentence as punishment, applying it only to the cases of ‘rarest of rare’ and yet, the Supreme Court while awarding death sentence to Afzal Guru admits the following:

…there is … no direct evidence of the agreement amounting to criminal conspiracy. However, the circumstances cumulatively considered and weighed, would unerringly point to the collaboration of the accused Afzal with the slain terrorists.

So there was no direct evidence.  There was only circumstantial evidence.  So, should we hand out death sentence on circumstantial evidence? 

Because in another case before Supreme Court, it says the following:

…when conviction is based solely on circumstantial evidence, capital punishment should not be handed out.

So, why death sentence to Afzal Guru based on circumstantial evidence? 

Is Afzal Guru killed today to satisfy millions of Indians, as a means to satisfy a political agenda, or to distract the people from an issue, or is he killed because Indians just want blood? 

According to me, this verdict and this hanging sets a bad precedent.  Shall we convict a person because the majority bays for his blood? Or should acquit him because the majority pardons him? 

[BTW, I did not agree with the Supreme Court verdict back in 2006].