Steve's comment:
"Jon's gone.  I hope that when it's my time, I die half as well as Jonathan Nobles did."

© The Associated Press 

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- Singer-songwriter Steve Earle, a longtime death penalty opponent, witnessed the execution of a man condemned for stabbing two women to death. 
  
Jonathan Nobles, 37, was high on drugs when he killed the two women in a stabbing frenzy in 1986.  In the death chamber Wednesday night, he greeted the country singer-songwriter with a smile. 
  
Earle later watched Nobles die after being given an injection. 
  
"I'm not here for any other reason except Jonathan asked me to be here today,'' said Earle, who once spent time in prison on a drug conviction.  He and Nobles met through a friend. 
  
"I still believe that what I just witnessed was murder, although nobody in this prison is any more responsible than anybody else in the state of Texas or the country for that matter,'' Earle said. 
  
Earle contributed the song Ellis Unit One to the soundtrack for the 1995 movie Dead Man Walking, inspired by the book by anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean.