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You could hear the urgency in Christy Armell's voice, and if you didn't catch it then it would become abundantly clear with her hailstorm of phone calls and e-mails.

Not just to you but to everybody she could reach.

This was a matter of life and death, she said.

Really.

Armell, 33, is something of a devotee of lost souls and lost causes, a once-quiet idealist of the underdog, especially those on the other side of the law.

She was calling last week on behalf of her latest cause, Kenneth Foster Jr., who until six days ago had a date with the executioner.

He was to be No. 24 this year on the Texas death penalty conveyer belt. By contrast, the last execution in New Mexico was in 2001; only two men sit on Death Row.

Armell, a criminal justice major at the University of Phoenix in Albuquerque, stumbled onto Foster's story while researching the death penalty for a class.

Foster, she learned, was a 19-year-old social work major and budding recording entrepreneur who in August 1996 made the unfortunate decision to drive three of his buddies around San Antonio, Texas, for an evening of booze and a little armed robbery.

No one was supposed to get hurt.

But by night's end, Michael LaHood Jr., 25, lay dead in the street, shot in the head by Foster's cohort Mauriceo Brown.

Foster and Brown went on trial together, despite defense attorneys' attempts to sever the cases (the other two took plea deals).

Although Foster never held the gun, never conspired to kill anyone, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to die along with Brown under an arcane Texas rule known as the law of parties.

The law condemns anyone connected with the murder regardless of intent. New Mexico has no such law, though conspirators can be convicted of murder if intent is proved.

Foster's case eventually inspired an international campaign to save him from the Texas executioner.

Armell joined in.

"I wrote Kenneth in prison and the letter he wrote back was so inspiring," she said. "He had this strength, this positive attitude. It just motivated me so much."

She began writing him regularly, reaching out to his family, other campaign members. Anyone.

"I wanted to help in any way in his struggle," she said. "He was convicted unfairly. And here he was showing us that together our voices would be heard."

Perhaps it helped her as much as it helped Foster. Armell's husband is in prison on battery charges.

As Aug. 30 - the date set for Foster's execution - neared, her calls and e-mails increased. Even her 13-year-old daughter wrote letters and fasted in protest.

Hours before Foster was to die by lethal injection, Texas Gov. Rick Perry commuted Foster's sentence.

"It was almost miraculous," Armell said. "This was Texas."

But this was only the beginning for Armell, who said she now writes letters daily to five other inmates across the country, including Rudy Medrano, another Texas Death Row inmate charged with murder under the law of parties.

"That's where all this has led," she said. "I can say Kenny has definitely been the push for me to find my voice."

Armell, not surprisingly, is against the death penalty. Period.

"It doesn't really stop crime," she said. "It doesn't end the suffering of the victim's family. Killing, whether legal or on the streets, is not the way to make things better."

She agrees convicts must be punished, but argues that rehabilitation is possible "until you take your last breath."

Of course, their victims don't get more than a last breath.

Armell said she realizes that most think her fervor for felons is odd, even disturbing.

"I get criticized all the time," she said. "But everyone is human. Everyone makes mistakes. Some mistakes are bigger than others."

So she writes, reminding the inmates of their humanity - and others of theirs.

"If I had time, I would probably write every single inmate," she said.

Would that there weren't so many.