North Dakota U-S Attorney Mac Schneider says his office and the defense lawyer for Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. are prepared to move ahead with re-sentencing, should U-S Attorney General Merrick Garland decide to reject the defense’s request to drop the death penalty.
Rodriguez is on death row at a federal prison in Indiana for the 2003 kidnapping and murder of UND student Dru Sjodin.
Schneider says if Garland grants the defense request, prosecutors will no longer pursue the death penalty.
Judge Ralph Erickson, who presided over the trial in Fargo, ordered that Rodriguez be re-sentenced. Erickson is now a federal appeals court judge, but continues to handle the case.
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(KNOX / KFGO)
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