Posted on 09/22/2006 10:11:07 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
FARGO, N.D. - Jurors on Friday sentenced a convicted sex offender to death for kidnapping and killing University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin, whose body was found in a Minnesota ravine nearly five months after she disappeared.
It was North Dakota's first death penalty case in more than a century. The state does not have the death penalty but it is allowed in federal cases.
Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 53, of Crookston, Minn., looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the sentence was announced.
The jury reached its decision after more than a day and a half of deliberations. The same federal jury convicted Rodriguez on Aug. 30 on a charge of kidnapping resulting in Sjodin's death.
Rodriguez's mother, Dolores, and sister, Ileanna Noyes, cried as the verdict was announced, as did a number of the jurors. Members of Sjodin's family looked somber and stared straight ahead. They shared hugs outside the courtroom.
Sjodin, 22, of Pequot Lakes, Minn., disappeared from a Grand Forks shopping mall parking lot on Nov. 22, 2003, and her body was found the following April in a ravine near Crookston. Authorities said she was beaten, raped and stabbed.
Rodriguez, who got out of prison about six months before the killing, was charged under federal law because Sjodin was taken across state lines.
U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, in his statements to jurors, said the death penalty would be the "right thing, in the right case." He stood near her portrait and asked for justice.
Rodriguez's attorney, Richard Ney, asked the jury for mercy after calling psychologists and Rodriguez's family to talk about his childhood of poverty, abuse and exposure to farm chemicals. Ney also said Rodriguez had been anxious about being released from prison after serving more than 20 years for assaults on three women in 1975 and 1980.
Yep, a lot of times. They don't even realize that there are American citizens who have Hispanic names whose families have been living in what is now the United States long before the first English or French colonies were founded in North America.
Were there really folks hoping that the woman who got dragged to death was an illegal?
Yeah, there were. It took a while but the mods deleted most if not all of their posts.
Proves nothing idiot, we have plenty of our own home-grown vermin, we still do not need illegal vermin to add to our crime problem. I don't care what color of skin he has or his ethnicity. He deserves death. And no one ever said the US would be crime free without illegals. Nor did anyone say most illegals commit hideous violent crimes.
good.
Just to clarify and get a consensus on this issue, the rapist/murderer is legal?
I don't know. I don't give a s***, because legal or otherwise, he needs to die a slow, painful death.
To be honest, I could care less whether or not he gets the nod. He is filling his role, which is to speak for those of us who want illegals deported. If that makes me a child, then so be it.
Were Helen Thomas to be brutally and senselessly murdered, I would expect that conservatives would, at minimum, express their sympathy to her family.
One just has to wonder how much attention Dru (or Natalee) would've gotten were they not attractive young girls.
Perhaps we see so much attention for attractive young girls because they are the ones most often selected by murdering perverts.
I am not going to help you hijack a thread onto your one issue song SR. We can take this up in a more appropraiate venune. Just remember next time you are tempted to slander a Freepers that not nearly as many people agree with you as you think.
Nice theory, but not one supported by facts.
According to the US Department of Justice, the average age of a murder victim is 31 years old. 65% of murders are committed by males, with male victims, vs. only 22% committed by males against females. Males are 10x more likely to become murderers than females, and are also 10x more likely to be murdered than are females.
So, we must seek another answer. I think it's fairly obvious.
Spell it out.
Attractive people are called that because they 'attract' attention. How do you propose to change human nature?
Of course not, that wasn't the point anyway.
Attractive people are called that because they 'attract' attention. How do you propose to change human nature?
I propose no such change. I simply would like to see, just once, the same level of outrage at the murder of an unattractive person.
You are the biggest defender of Illegals on FR. What gives? Are you one of them.
Yes he is a citizen, born here. I'm glad that the jurors had the backbone to give the right sentence for once.
One of "whom?" People who are tired of seeing illegal immigration brought into a thread that has nothing to do with it?
Well, any scumbag who did what this guy did deserves the Death Penalty. On another note, approx 25% of all inmates are illegals.
Don't you wish that were true of FR threads?
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