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Rodriguez case may revive North Dakota death penalty debate
By DAVE KOLPACK Associated Press Writer FARGO, N.D. Alfonso Rodriguez Jr.s death sentence may prompt the Legislature to reconsider whether North Dakota should have the ultimate penalty, Gov. John Hoeven and Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem believe.
Rodriguezs lawyers say they hope their clients sentence stirs another kind of public discussion about the wrongheadedness of the death penalty.
Hopefully, this case will spur a debate in the state of North Dakota about the death penalty, and the problems and difficulties that it raises, said Rodriguez attorney Robert Hoy, who is a former Cass County prosecutor.
I think if it were truly a deterrent to crime ... there would be no crime in the state of Texas, and we all know that thats certainly not the case, Hoy said.
Stenehjem said the killings of Rodriguezs victim, University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin, 22, of Pequot Lakes, and the recent slaying of Valley City State University student Mindy Morgenstern, 22, of New Salem, may revive the issue in the Legislature.
Morgenstern was found dead in her apartment last week, and authorities said her throat was slashed. A Barnes County jailer who lived in her apartment building, Moe Maurice Gibbs, 34, has been charged with murder. Sjodins body was found in a Minnesota ravine in 2004, and authorities said she had been beaten, raped and stabbed.
You have to think about what kind of a reaction the state of North Dakota needs to offer, Stenehjem said. I think its early to say that the Legislature might take a different approach than it has, but sometimes you have to look and say, Maybe things are changing.
Lawmakers have not debated a death penalty bill since 1995, when the North Dakota Senate defeated the idea. Stenehjem was a Grand Forks state senator at the time, and he led the opposition to the measure on the Senate floor.
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