By  Seamus McGraw

August 30, 2006

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FARGO, N.D. (Crime Library) —  After less than four hours of deliberation, a federal jury in Fargo has convicted a repeat sex offender of the brutal sexually fueled kidnapping of and subsequent slaying of 22-year-old Dru Sjodin who was abducted in 2003 from a Grand Forks N.D. mall.

The verdict came almost after the jury began its first full day of deliberations in the case of Alfonso Rodriguez, whom authorities had charged with abducting and sexually abusing the 22-year-old co-ed Dru Sjodin in 2003. Her decomposing, partially nude body was found months later in a ravine not far from Rodriguez's Crookston, Minn., home, but miles from the Grand Forks, N.D., mall where she was abducted.

The verdict appears to be a rebuke to the defense's strategy — the defense never took on the allegations against Rodriguez directly, but instead challenged the authority of the federal court to hear the case. The defense strategy echoed what has become a growing chorus of critics who have charged that the federal government in recent years has insinuated itself in cases which traditionally had been state matters, and have in some cases sought the death penalty for defendants charged with crimes in states that do not permit capital punishment.

That was the almost the entire sum and substance of the defense strategy in Rodriguez's case. From the beginning, defense attorneys made no effort to counter the evidence indicating that Dru had been kidnapped and killed by Rodriguez, who had been recently released from prison after serving nearly a quarter of a century for an unrelated sex offense. Instead, the defense argued that in all likelihood, Dru had died while still in North Dakota, and that Rodriguez should have been tried by a state court there. North Dakota does not have the death penalty.

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