There's an angle that is rarely mentionned is how popular death penalty can genuinely be in a lot of societies. In my experience, I heard a lot of euro liberals saying "democracy is fine but too much democracy and we're back to having death penalty" the irony being that it's actually the case for China, it's only because people want it that it hasn't been fully abolished.

I have a strong conviction that death penalty abolition is the way forward in human History, just like prison and police abolition and even schools as we know them (being replaced by better communal education of course). But it's gonna take time, a lot of, so we definitely shouldn't demonize countries that still have it just because they have it, it's more compelling to analyse how it is used (for example, punishing extremely harmful crimes of people who have public responsibility and power VS using it as an ultimate threat to keep black people working in the prison Industrial complex)