FARGO, N.D.-
Jurors on Wednesday began deliberating whether a man convicted in the death of college student Dru Sjodin should be sentenced to life in prison or be executed.
Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 53, of Crookston, Minn., was convicted by the same jury Aug. 30 of kidnapping resulting of the death of Sjodin, 22, of Pequot Lakes, Minn.
If jurors do not unanimously agree on a death sentence, Rodriguez will get life in prison without parole. In his closing argument, U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, near a portrait of Sjodin, told jurors that “justice is a penalty of death.”
“What the law is asking you to do is not gentle,” he said. “But it is the right thing, in the right case.”
Sjodin disappeared from a Grand Forks mall parking lot in November 2003. Her body was found the following April in a ravine near Crookston. Officials said the University of North Dakota student had been beaten, raped and stabbed.
Defense attorney Richard Ney outlined for jurors a list of 30 factors he believes favor a life sentence–the last of which was mercy.
Rodriguez’s attorneys have said he suffered from abuse, racism and may have had brain damage from exposure to chemicals as a child.
He was released from prison in May 2003 after serving 23 years for assault and attempted kidnapping. He attacked a woman while he was on leave from the Minnesota state security hospital, after he was convicted in 1975 for two separate assaults on other women.
Ney said a “system failure” put Rodriguez back on the street in 2003 after he asked prison officials about moving into a halfway house.
“Mercy. It doesn’t seem that out of line, does it, for that kind of person?” he asked.
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