By  Seamus McGraw

(Continued)

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Tales of childhood deprivation fail to sway jurors as much as horror of Dru's death

A few days later, they decided that the case was sufficiently egregious to warrant the death penalty and the penalty phase of the case began.

Defense attorneys brought in a parade of witnesses, including relatives, as well as psychologists and experts who testified that Rodriguez, the child of farm laborers had endured a childhood of poverty and may have suffered significant brain damage as a result of exposure to pesticides as a young boy.

Alfonso Rodriquez

But that apparently was not enough to mitigate in the jurors' minds the image painted during the guilt phase of Dru's last few terrifying moments of life. Prosecutors had presented forensic testimony indicating that the young woman, who had been in the middle of a cell phone conversation with her boyfriend when she was snatched from a mall parking lot, had been alive, presumably in terror, as Rodriguez trundled her intro a car, trucked her across the state line to Minnesota where he raped her, slashed her throat and covered her head with a plastic bag before leaving her lifeless body in a ditch.

Dru Sjodin

Defense attorney Richard Ney told reporters after the verdict that he would seek a new trial and if that fails, he will file an appeal.

Richard Ney

Defendants in federal court have fewer options for appeal than those convicted in state courts, and the defendants on federal death row on average spend between four and eight years there before their sentences are carried out, a process that in some state jurisdictions can take decades.

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