Where there's any doubt about guilt or innocence, to execute people is clearly cold-bloooded murder. That's easy enough to understand - though there've been enough people executed when there were swerious doubts ta alrm anybody. And it's still hapening to day in the places thta still go in for juduicial execution, like the USA and Saudi Arabia and China and Iraq.

But Jonathan Nobles whiose execution Steve Earle writes movingly about was guilty of some horrible killings over 12 years ago. Here's how Steve ends his piece, and I think what he says deserves to be reflected on by anyone who still defends judicial killings:

I do know that Jonathan Nobles changed profoundly while he was in prison. I know that the lives of people he came in contact with changed as well, including mine. America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore. The problem is that most people who go to prison get out one day and walk among us. Given as many people as we lock up, we better learn to rehabilitate someone. I believe Jon might have been able to teach us how. Now we'll never know.