FARGO, N.D. — A federal judge threw out the death sentence for a Crookston, Minnesota, man convicted in the 2003 kidnapping, raping and slaying of a North Dakota college student. Judge Ralph Erickson ruled that there had been insufficient information at the sentencing hearing about Alfonso Rodriguez Jr.’s mental capacity. Judge Erickson ordered that the sentencing phase of the trial be started over. Rodriguez has been on death row at a federal prison for nearly two decades in the death of Dru Kathrina Sjodin, who disappeared from a Grand Forks mall in November 2003 and whose body was found six months later near Crookston. She had been stabbed. Rodriguez was sentenced to death in 2006.
Rodriguez. On Death Row since 2007.