I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here: eval will trap death, even when invoked from a __DIE__ handler:

% perl -wl 
local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {
  print "in handler (@_)";
  die "from handler";
};
eval { die "foo" };
print "eval returned (but knows the error was <$@>)";
__END__  
in handler (foo at - line 5.
)
eval returned (but knows the error was <from handler at - line 3.
>)
%
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Hugo