I support the death penalty. I know this is breaking with many of my liberal colleagues, particularly those who are involved in groups like Amnesty International. Yet, there are some good reasons for supporting the death penalty that differs from what some people suggest as a deterrent to crime. It is simple human dignity not to preserve life where life shouldn't exist.

Those of us who have grown up around farms know about mercy killing of animals. You shoot down a working dog that bites you or fails to do his job, you put down a horse with broken ribs. Dairy cattle are shipped off the slaughter house about three years after they start lactating after calving.

Somehow it's decent and fair to treat animals that way, but humanity does not apply to humans. Torture is wrong on and off-the-farm. Animals and humans have a purpose for existing, though their skills and intelligence differ on how they can be used. Humans as free individuals can create great things, but if they are denied such things they are no more useful then a dairy cow with methosis.

Punishment should be quick, forceful, and complete in a relatively short time. Long-term prison sentences don't work, they only create career criminals. Those who can be rehabilitated quickly by powerful psychiatric drugs, those who can't be should be executed. It should be quick and painless as we do with farm animals.

We sometimes make mistakes when it comes to sentencing people to death. These are horrible mistakes, but we must instead work to reform justice at the trial level to prevent this from happening. When we do error, it is better to execute quickly then let people suffer the mistake of justice any longer then necessary.