Rodriguez sent to death row
Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. checked out the Cass County Jail at 8:16 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 27 and started his journey toward death row.
Rodriguez, 54, of Crookston, Minn., a convicted sex offender sentenced to death for the killing of University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin, will await his execution at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.
He had spent 1,022 days in the Fargo jail.
According to the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson made the sentence official on Feb. 8. The death penalty sentencing was only the second in North Dakota in almost 100 years.
North Dakota does not have a death penalty and has not had any executions since 1976, according to the death penalty information center.
Because the Sjodin murder was considered as a federal case, the death penalty was an option for jurors.
Students at NDSU have varying opinions on the death penalty and the verdict for Rodriguez.
“I am fine with him being on death row,” said Kane Olson, a freshman majoring in history. “I guess I tried not to get involved with it (the case) though because I didn’t know that much about it.”
Olson also said before Rodriguez was charged, he did not know he was already an offender.
“If he had stayed in jail the first time, this (the crime) never would have happened,” Olson said.
Other students do not agree with the death penalty verdict.
“I think it is wrong but fair for the family,” said Heather Bernhardt, a junior majoring in accounting. “If it was my family I would be alright with the sentence but from an outsider looking in, I don’t agree with it (the death penalty).”
According to the associated press, “Sjodin, 22, disappeared from a Grand Forks shopping mall parking lot (in Nov.) 2003. Her body was found nearly five months later in a Minnesota ravine. Authorities said the University of North Dakota student had been beaten, raped and stabbed.”