If you and your friends declare that you are independent of the country you're actually in and stop paying your taxes, then at some point it's reasonably likely that that country would send an agent to your property and talk to you about your tax bill. So you say "You have breached the Foreign Acts Act 2024 of the Principality of Shrx" and arrest them and you confine them pending a trial (the Foreign Acts Act provides for three years' jail, but doesn't allow the death penalty). The agent's boss realises they never returned and identifies their last known position as your property and you say "this is my country and he has been arrested pending trial for breach of our law". They contact the police and attempt to use violent force to free their agent. You shoot back. Your best friend is shot beside you, and you shoot one of their police. They retreat and wait for more firepower and eventually defeat you. You declare that the police officer who killed your friend is guilty of murder under the Crimes Against the Person Act 2024, whereas they declare that you are guilty of murder and treason under the National Criminal Code. Your body is physically confined to a certain place, decided on by a government, for 23 years until finally you die of cancer, whereas the police officer who killed your friend suffers no unreasonable limitations on his freedom; like the other police officers who did that job, he receives a medal for bravery, and he keeps working as a police officer for another two years until his wife convinces him it's too dangerous now they have a kid, so he joins his dad's lumber business. He does suffer from stress as a consequence of the murder, but the police force pay for twenty-four hours of psychological counselling a year (over and above the 12 hours he gets from the national health insurance system) which helps even if it doesn't completely match the costs during the worst times.
It's clear that the abolition of the death penalty isn't actually all that relevant to this scenario. We can still judge whether or not shrx was the sovereign of his territory or not.
