Theresa Ellis believes the life of her pen pal on death row is as important as her own.

So does Ann Baker, who is obtaining clearance to meet her condemned correspondent. And Kent Peters collects donations for his friend on death row, whom he has visited with his 10-year-old daughter.

Ellis, Baker and Peters are San Diego County residents and members of California People of Faith Working against the Death Penalty (CPF), a statewide organization that strives to empower California's diverse faith communities to end the death penalty through advocacy, education and prayer.

CPF has about 15 chapters and more than 1,500 individual members from different congregations, according to Eric DeBode, coordinator of the southern California chapter.

The San Diego chapter hopes its letter-writing ministry “will expose the humanity of death-row prisoners, often demonized by the media,” says Peters, a 49-year-old father of five.

Contact between death row inmates and the 10 local CPF members who write to them has brought life-changing experiences to both groups. Chapter members have become more aware of life on death row and the needs of incarcerated people. Their confined pen pals realize that some people care about them and oppose the death penalty, says Deacon George Salinger, assistant chaplain of San Quentin State Prison.

Prisoners feel abandoned and isolated from their families who usually stop contacting them because it is so emotionally painful for the relatives, adds Deacon Dennis Merino, chaplain at California State Prison in Sacramento. “Some parents blame themselves for their sons’ crimes. Staying connected to the outside is a life-line to the inmates’ self-worth.”

Peters hopes he can provide a “lifeline” to his pen pal, who has no other outside contacts and has attempted suicide. “I'll do what I can to give him the will to live,” says Peters.

Support includes soliciting annual donations used to provide Mike Elliot, his pen pal, with a color TV and regular packages of items such as snacks, clothing, reading materials and art supplies. This outreach “completely staggered Mike, who has received little or no kindness during his lifetime,” says Peters.

Elliot includes drawings of a teddy bear and cartoon characters in his letters to Libby Peters, who also draws pictures in the notes she sends to him.

Salinger called this level of support for a death row prisoner “very unusual.”

“I learned so much about Mike in the 70 or so letters I have received from him during the past two years,” Peters says. He and Libby visited Elliot on Dec. 26, supervised by guards.

During Elliot's youth, he was repeatedly beaten by his mother and her boyfriend and sexually abused by family members and friends. He left home at 13 and supported himself by prostitution and robbing retail stores and an armored car of $50,000 — crimes for which he was imprisoned nearly a decade, Peters explains.

Elliot was convicted in 1996 of torturing, stabbing and shooting a woman in a Sacramento bar. Peters says Mike remembers pulling the trigger, but has no memory of the details because he was inebriated at the time. “He has strong feelings of regret because his victim was a woman who suffered before her death,” Peters explains.

But the horror of his pen pal's crime does not deter Peters from his ministry. “For the first time in his life, Mike is beginning to be open to the idea that God might care about him,” says Peters. “I feel very privileged to be a part of demonstrating God's love. Mike is worth it.”

Heavenly Mercy

Writing to condemned men has also strengthened other CPF pen pals’ commitment to end the death penalty. They are convinced that society can be protected from capital crime by life imprisonment sentences without the possibility of parole — a position repeated by Pope John Paul II and the U.S. bishops.

Ann Baker coordinates the letter-writing ministry and obtains names of death-row inmates from the California Appellate Project, which screens those seeking pen pals. Local writers do not give their home addresses, and mail is forwarded from the San Diego diocesan Office for Social Ministry, which sponsors the program and is directed by Peters.

Baker's pen pal was convicted in 1997 of assaulting his 68-year-old mother in Los Angeles and strangling her with a sock. Baker says he was born out of incest and was an accomplice in killing his mother. His anger stems from believing he should have been convicted of manslaughter instead of first-degree murder, she explains.

“Regardless of his crime, it is not my place to judge and condemn,” says Baker. “Only God has the right to take a life.”

During the two years Baker has written to her pen pal — a baptized Catholic who reads the Bible and religious magazines — she has seen the tone of his letters change from anger to trust that God will help him cope with death-row conditions. She says that, as a result, she's truly begun “to walk the walk against the death penalty instead of giving only lip service” to the dignity of human life, she adds.

Theresa Ellis also sees the humanity of her middle-aged pen pal, John, whom she describes as “peaceful, proper and patriotic.” She has no plans to visit him but writes him about her 23-year residency in Alaska. He often describes his hobby of creating charcoal drawings. John was convicted of killing a police officer in Orange County in a 1980 shootout, which wounded two other officers and two civilians.

“We share our experiences but not our personal lives,” Ellis says.

Ellis says that corresponding with John has deepened her dependence on God and strengthened her opposition to capital punishment, as displayed on her T-shirt: “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” She believes that life sentences “put the lives of prisoners in the hands of God instead of in the hands of society.”

Sixth Commandment

In Chowchilla, Calif., about a dozen women face execution, including a mother convicted of murdering her four daughters by setting fire to her house. One of the prisoners here receives letters from Marjorie McLaughlin, 70, a CPF member who also prays for the inmate.

Although the chapter participants focus on condemned criminals, they also extend their care to the families of their pen pals’ victims. Peters intends to locate the son of the woman murdered by Elliot.

Eudist Father Bill Rowland, pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in San Diego, believes the CPF letter-writing ministry is “fantastic.”

“Connecting with prisoners on death row,” he says, “personalizes the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

Joyce Carr writes from San Diego.