Rodriguez found guilty

FARGO, N.D. -- It was as if emotion had been drained from the courtroom in the days of passion and argument leading up to this critical moment.

"Guilty," the court clerk read at noon Wednesday from the jury verdict form, and there were no gasps or sighs, no words of approval or disapproval.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. showed no emotion either as he was convicted of kidnapping 22-year-old college student Dru Sjodin in 2003 and causing her death. Seated behind him, his mother and sister quietly dabbed at tears.

His attorneys, who now will fight to save him from a death penalty, showed no surprise. Nor did prosecutors, who waited until the brief proceedings were over to share subdued smiles and handshakes.

Stoic and subdued, too, were Linda Walker and Allan Sjodin, Dru's parents, who quietly embraced relatives and friends outside the courtroom.

"We've just decided to refrain from commenting until the whole process is completed," Walker said. "Thanks so much for your support, and everybody out there."

On Tuesday, the same seven women and five men who found Rodriguez guilty will be asked to determine whether the crime fits eligibility requirements set out in the federal death-penalty statute. If they decide it does, they will consider aggravating and mitigating factors and retire a third time to pass sentence, either death or life in prison.

Judge Ralph Erickson said the court will convene without the jury today to hash out questions concerning witnesses the government plans to call in the penalty phase and the admissibility of some autopsy and crime scene photographs.

Jurors got the case at 4 p.m. Tuesday but met for only an hour, choosing a foreman and receiving some of the more than 100 exhibits entered during the trial. They resumed deliberations at 9 a.m. Wednesday, and about 2½ hours later notified Erickson that a verdict had been reached.

As Rodriguez, 53, waited at the defense table, flanked by his attorneys and U.S. marshals, Walker arrived just before noon and took her customary seat on an aisle. About two dozen other family members and close friends followed her in, many touching her on a shoulder as they passed.

Jurors also showed little emotion, focusing intently on the court clerk as he read their verdict. Each answered "yes" as they were polled to confirm their unanimous verdict.

Outside, as Sjodin family members skirted several dozen journalists, family friend Bob Heales stopped and said, "There's probably a million things to say right now, but they've asked us not to comment."

Asked if the verdict brought some relief, Heales replied, "I don't think we're done yet."

Jurors not persuaded

After months of wrangling over jurisdictional, procedural and evidentiary issues, the first death-penalty prosecution in North Dakota in a century began on July 6 with an often turgid jury selection process.

In eight days of trial, prosecutors called 52 witnesses, the defense only one, a forensic scientist who challenged autopsy findings by Ramsey County Medical Examiner Michael McGee that Sjodin likely was sexually assaulted.

In his closing argument Tuesday, defense attorney Robert Hoy told jurors the government had failed to prove when, where and how Sjodin died.

"Simply connecting Alfonso Rodriguez to Dru Sjodin [through fibers, DNA and circumstantial evidence] does not answer when Dru Sjodin died," he said, and he suggested that Sjodin could have died within minutes of being pushed into the car, a bag over her head. The movement of her body to a ravine outside Crookston would be incidental to the assault, Hoy said, and would fall outside interstate transportation as defined by the federal kidnapping law. Under that scenario, he argued, Rodriguez should have been tried in a state court, where the death penalty is not available.

U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley dismissed the defense strategy as "a lawyerly verbal cartoon."

Wrigley told jurors: "A journey begins with a single step. It's the same thing with transportation -- one single step."

The jury apparently agreed.

'So carefree'

Sjodin, 22, a University of North Dakota art student from Pequot Lakes, Minn., finished work at the Victoria's Secret store in the Columbia Mall at 4 p.m. on Nov. 22, 2003. She shopped in the mall for an hour and bought a purse before walking out of the mall at 5 p.m.

"So carefree," Wrigley said, recounting the scene that jurors had watched in a video.

Moments later, she was talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend, Chris Lang, who was in Minneapolis, when Lang heard her say, "OK, OK," and the call ended.

When Sjodin didn't show up for a 9 p.m. shift at a Grand Forks bar, her roommate called police. They found her car in the mall parking lot and a knife sheath lying nearby.

Investigators later tied that sheath to a knife they recovered from Rodriguez's car. They also connected fibers on the sheath to a blanket taken from his home, part of a thick web of fiber and DNA evidence linking defendant and victim.

Rodriguez became a suspect almost immediately, when an investigator obtained a list of registered sex offenders in the Crookston area. Convicted on kidnapping and sexual assault charges in 1975 and 1980 and released in May 2003 after serving 23 years in prison, Rodriguez was the only Level 3 offender on the list.

Investigators focused on Crookston after learning that a final, voiceless call from Sjodin's phone to Lang at 7:42 p.m. was relayed off a cell phone tower near there. But nobody could establish at trial whether the call was a frantic plea for help or an accident, a redial function activated when the phone fell or Sjodin's body was moved. The phone was found in grass near the body.

An early suspect

Interviewed at a job site in McIntosh, Minn., Rodriguez provided an alibi that quickly unraveled. He was arrested on Dec. 1, 2003, and charged in a North Dakota state court.

Wrigley sat in on those proceedings, anticipating the case could become a federal matter, as thousands of friends, relatives and volunteers searched for Sjodin on both sides of the Red River.

The searching ended on April 17, 2004, a warm Saturday morning, when a retired Polk County deputy walking along a ravine outside Crookston spotted a piece of black fabric. Moving closer, he saw a single bare leg, bent at the knee, extending from beneath a coat. Blonde hair was visible beyond where pulled grass had been laid over the body.

Sjodin lay with her face to the ground, nude from the waist down, her hands tied behind her back. Shredded plastic, remnants of a Kmart shopping bag, were wrapped around her neck, which had been cut twice in an uneven notching pattern.

Her father had walked within feet of her that winter, but she was beneath the snow.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who was in Crookston to encourage searchers the day Sjodin's body was found, said Wednesday that "if ever there was a case for which [the] death penalty should apply, this is it."

He also said that "while a swift guilty verdict provides some closure, our thoughts and prayers are with Dru's family and friends who continue to deal with her loss each day."

crhaga@startribune.com • 612-673-4514 vonste@startribune.com • 612-673-7184