"Her body just shut down," he said. "I always remember her telling me she didn't want to be kept alive that way. Nevertheless, it was very hard for me to sign the paperwork."

Miller, like most Southern California lawmakers, did not return to Congress for the emergency session last year to try to prevent a federal court from removing Terry Schiavo's feeding tube.

Berman, who also made the decision to take his mother off life support - a decision he said he made after consulting his rabbi - also missed the vote.

"People say to me, `Your vote for Iraq, it's because of Israel, isn't it?' It's absolutely not. I see what happened in World War II, and I can't help but believe that if we had dealt with Hitler two or three years earlier than we did, the Holocaust would have been avoided.

"I'm not enough of a religious scholar to tell you what Judaism says about the death penalty," Schiff said. But, he added, "if someone was deterred by the death penalty from murdering an innocent person, that life was saved."

Solis, who has been deeply involved in addressing the disappearances and murders of more than 400 women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, said she has found her views shifting in favor of the death penalty.

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