Brainerd Dispatch: News | Brainerd, Minnesota | Brainerd Lakes Area News on brainerddispatch.com

Home > NEWS >

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

E-mail

Forums

Death sentence upheld in Sjodin abduction case

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence of a convicted rapist for the 2003 kidnapping and killing of a University of North Dakota student in a case that led Minnesota and North Dakota to toughen their sex-offender laws.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., of Crookston, Minn., got a fair trial and rejected his bid to overturn his death sentence.

The defense said it would appeal.

The 2-1 ruling came three years to the day that a federal jury in Fargo, N.D., decided Rodriguez should die for kidnapping resulting in the death of Dru Sjodin. The jury earlier found him guilty of abducting Sjodin on Nov. 22, 2003, from the parking lot of a Grand Forks, N.D., shopping mall where she worked.

Dru Sjodin

Despite massive searches that included National Guard troops, the 22-year-old Pequot Lakes woman was missing for five months until her body was found near Crookston, where Rodriguez lived with his mother. Authorities said she had been raped, beaten and stabbed.

"We're gratified by the outcome but we know that this is just one step on the road to the ultimate resolution of this case," said Lynn Jordheim, acting U.S. attorney for North Dakota. "We have prevailed to this point. The next step is up to the defense."

Rodriguez, 56, who had been released from prison just a few months before the kidnapping, appealed on several grounds, including the venue for the trial, the composition and selection of the jury, evidentiary rulings, statements by the prosecution and Sjodin's family and friends during the penalty phase of his trial, the jury instructions during the penalty phase and the constitutionality of the death penalty.

The three-judge panel of the St. Louis-based court rejected the defense arguments on all those points. It said the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying the defense motion to move the trial from North Dakota to Minnesota and disagreed with the defense's criticisms of the jury selection process. It said the evidence about semen in Sjodin's body was properly admitted, as was evidence of Rodriguez' previous convictions for rape, attempted rape, kidnapping and assault. And it rejected the defense's claims of errors by the judge and prosecution through his trial.

Judge Michael Melloy dissented from part of the opinion. He said there were several errors in the government's penalty-phase closing arguments that were so serious that the death sentence should be vacated and that the case should be sent back to the district court for a new penalty phase.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr.

Melloy wrote that the prosecution mischaracterized the death penalty as the only potential way for the jury to distinguish between punishing Rodriguez for the kidnapping alone and punishing him for murder. He also wrote that the prosecution made inflammatory statements denigrating the defense team, improperly injecting emotions into the deliberations. And he said it was likely that one or more jurors believed they could not consider relevant mitigating evidence.

"In reaching this conclusion, I do not take lightly the jury's finding of several serious aggravating factors, the extreme violence of the crimes against Dru Sjodin, or the overwhelming evidence of the defendant's guilt," Melloy wrote. "However, we must ensure that jurors have been allowed to serve their proper role with full consideration of all relevant factors and full opportunity to exercise the discretion vested solely in their hands."

Defense attorney Richard Ney said the issues Melloy raised would be the key to the defense's petition to the full 8th Circuit to rehear the appeal.

Note: Comments are not edited and don't represent the views of The Brainerd Dispatch. Please read our posting rules in the terms of service policy. To report a post that may be inappropriate, click the triangle alert icon.