I have a clear enough idea of what those morons regard as an 'Evolved society' to know it's definitely not my kind of place.
Of course! They are
a priori defining non-use of the death penalty as "evolved" and use of it as "non-evolved." It's a stupid misuse of "evolve" or any form of the word "evolution, anyway. There's no such thing as "more evolved" in evolutionary theory, just "more complex" or "better adapted" (neither of which are requirements for the other).
What the we-automatically-reject-majority-thinking-and-natural-human-impulse-crowd-because-it-makes-us-oh-so-way-more-cool-not-to-be-in-the-majority means is
better. But by whose standards? Oh,
theirs. Their instinctive, unreasoning, just-because-we-say-so, founded-only-within-their-own-heads standards.
