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Friday, February 9, 2007
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Death for Rodriguez
By DAVE KOLPACK Associated Press Writer FARGO, N.D. - Friends and family wept. Prosecutors sat with heads bowed. A defense attorney and the judge made impassioned speeches, with the judge himself fighting tears. And convicted killer Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. showed no emotion.
Rodriguez was formally sentenced to death Thursday for the kidnapping and killing of University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin, 22, whose case led to tougher laws against sex offenders.
In statements during and after the hearing, her parents never mentioned Rodriguez.
Sjodin's parents, Allan Sjodin and Linda Walker, and her stepfather, Sid Walker, stood together in front of U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson and talked about the value of her life, which ended in a Minnesota ravine more than three years ago.
"I have been told to talk from my heart," Walker said. "Well, my heart has been torn into a million little pieces."
Rodriguez, 53, a convicted rapist from Crookston, was found guilty by a jury last fall of kidnapping resulting in the death of Sjodin, a UND student from Pequot Lakes. The same jury voted unanimously for the death penalty.
Rodriguez sat motionless during the sentencing. He declined a chance to speak.
"I don't say his name and it's a nonentity. It's not worth my time," Allan Sjodin said at a news conference after the sentencing.
"I, quite frankly, at this point in my life, didn't care to ever hear anything from him," Walker said.
Walker said she has spoken to the Rodriguez family in the past, but turned down their request to get together before the trial.
"I just didn't feel comfortable with it," she began. "It seemed to me it was ...
"Too little, too late," Allan Sjodin interjected.
Erickson voice broke as he handed down the death sentence and called it was the most difficult day of his life.
"If it were possible, I would gladly lay down my own life to have had this whole ordeal avoided, to have Dru Sjodin back with her family, to have never heard of you, Mr. Rodriguez," Erickson said. "The life of one federal judge more or less pales in comparison to the pain that this crime has inflicted on so many people."
Allan Sjodin said later that Erickson gave a "touching" and "powerful" statement.
"Certainly I've always understood he's a heartfelt person," he said. "I've always felt he was ... not necessarily for the death penalty."
Defense attorney Richard Ney acknowledged that Erickson had no choice but to impose the death penalty, then Ney gave a two-minute speech against capital punishment.
"I know from my experience that this sentence will not bring peace or healing to one family, but I do know it will bring devastation to another," he said.
Sjodin disappeared from a Grand Forks shopping mall parking lot in 2003. Her body was found nearly five months later near Crookston. Authorities said she had been beaten, raped and stabbed. Rodriguez had been released from prison six months earlier for other crimes that included rape and attempted kidnapping.
The case has led to tougher sex offender laws in North Dakota and Minnesota, including life without parole for the most serious offenses and stricter supervision of offenders after they leave prison.
Authorities said they expected to begin moving Rodriguez to a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., within days to await death by lethal injection. Ney gave notice that he plans to appeal.
It is the first death penalty case in North Dakota in nearly 100 years.
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