I think you've completely missed Black Wolf's point that by claiming to be civilised while still executing, you're merely adding window dressing to a fairly barbaric act.
Forget your earlier question, a closer analogy is whether civilised people beat their children with a cane or cat'o'nine tails. After all, the cane was considered civilised enough that we were still seeing it used in schools only a few decades ago. But most countries in the western world realised that perhaps this wasn't the way we should be treating children at all, let alone when many canings were given out to children who hadn't actually done anything, and were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.