I know I keep saying the same thing:

The Executioner’s [i.e. Way’s] killing is perennial, it’s true.But to undertake the killing yourself – that’s like trying to carve lumber for a master carpenter.
Try to carve lumber for a master carpenter
and you’ll soon have blood on your hands.

    –  Tao Te Ching,Passage 75

    But the same thing keeps happening, only in ever more gruesome forms:

Iraq’s turbulent effort to reckon with the violence of its past took another macabre turn on Monday when the execution of Saddam Hussein’s half brother ended with the hangman’s noose decapitating him after he dropped through the gallows trapdoor.

 The executioner’s bloody hands only create more political problems:

Further details were left to a news conference called six hours
later, when rumors were circulating among Sunni Arab loyalists of the
former government, and on Arabic-language television channels
broadcasting across the Middle East, that Mr. Ibrahim had been
deliberately decapitated in an act of revenge by the Maliki government
and as an insult to the Sunni Muslim world.

The depth of
suspicion, and the readiness among Sunni Arabs to blame the United
States for everything grim in Iraq, was reflected in interviews
conducted in neighboring countries after the hangings. “The U.S. is 100
percent guilty,” said Turki al-Rasheed, who heads an organization
promoting democracy in Saudi Arabia. “It means they cut Barzan’s head
in the execution chamber.”

  When will we learn to avoid the "twisty path" of capital punishment?