(Glad to see you back again, Cofty, I hope you're well.)
I don't know if this POV has been addressed in this old and long thread, so excuse me if it had been touched before.
It appears to me that the apparent double standard regarding the consumption of unbled meat in the torah may be resolved by evaluating the individual's responsibility on taking a life of an animal.
If an Israelite would take a life, therefore "stealing" life from God, it would be an act of respect towards Yahweh to symbolically return the life to the divinity by wasting the blood to the ground without consuming it.
However, if the (clean) animal was found dead already, the Israelite wouldn't be responsible for taking that life, and therefore, wouldn't have to symbolically return that life back to the ultimate life-giving god. He would not be guilty of capital sin, merely uncleanness.
Therefore, the capital punishment would be deserved, not by the mundane consumption of the fluid in itself, but for the equivalent of the original sin, that is, appropriation of something that belongs exclusively to the divinity (either being the authority to decide what is right or wrong, or life itself). That who would eat unbled meat whose life he hadn't taken, wouldn't be regarded as guilty of the same level of transgression.