I find their rationale about how Death Row works a little...I dunno, too pandering? I mean, look at DF. You can simulate a lot of unpleasant things depending on your level of imagination, not because the game was designed that way, but because the mechanics have the depth and take a mostly neutral stance to what you can do with them. Also in light of the way they did Permanent Punishments, you can still make a Little Prison of Horrors pretty easily. It's not that I intended to make a murder-factory prison, nor do I really find a limited death row system a real problem thematically or more mechanically. But the idea of "well that's not realistic" or "we don't want to offend people" doesn't really hold water in a game where you can make people live in the dirt in a 1x1 room their whole existence, or build the prison chapel in the same room as your garbage stockpile and morgue. It seems like one of those game mechanics where you end up singling it out more by restricting it. Not that DF doesn't do that in its own way, and makes excuses about realism. I guess I expected them to defend the fact it was a simulation above all else, instead of going out of their way to control how it was used.
Put simpler, they could have done exactly what they did without going on and on about how sensitive Death Row is, and I think it'd be fine.
Although I do like how executions are an event that affects the whole prison. I suppose when you build up this much drama around the mechanic, you spend some time defending your choices. I do think they're taken the time to simulate it to the degree that it gets the player to think about the process of execution regardless of what view they hold on it.