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FARGO, North Dakota (AP) -- Jurors who are deciding whether a convicted sex offender should be put to death for killing University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin are weighing pleas for justice and mercy.
The federal jury of seven women and five men began a second day of deliberations at 9 a.m. Thursday. They met for 3-1/2 hours Wednesday without reaching a decision in the state's first death penalty case in nearly a century.
If they do not unanimously agree on a sentence of death, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. will get life in prison without parole.
Rodriguez, 53, of Crookston, Minnesota, was convicted by the same jury August 30 of kidnapping resulting of the death of Sjodin, 22, of Pequot Lakes, Minnesota.
In closing arguments, jurors heard a prosecutor's plea for justice and a defense attorney's plea for mercy.
U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, standing near a portrait of Sjodin, told jurors that "justice is a penalty of death" for the man who abducted the college student and killed her.
"What the law is asking you to do is not gentle," Wrigley told jurors. "But it is the right thing, in the right case."
Defense attorney Richard Ney outlined for jurors a list of 30 factors he believes favor a life sentence -- the last of which was mercy.
"Mercy. It doesn't seem that out of line, does it, for that kind of person?" he asked.
Rodriguez's attorneys have said he suffered from abuse, racism and may have had brain damage from exposure to chemicals as a child. Ney said a "system failure" put Rodriguez back on the street in May 2003 after he asked prison officials about moving into a halfway house.
Ney said he was not trying to excuse or explain the crime. "The issue here is bigger than that," he said.
Sjodin disappeared from a Grand Forks mall parking lot in November 2003. Her body was found the following April in a ravine near Crookston. Officials said the University of North Dakota student had been beaten, raped and stabbed.
Wrigley said Rodriguez marched Sjodin to a ravine and slashed her throat.
"She was shivering, she was cold, she was scared," Wrigley said.
Sjodin would have turned 25 years old next Tuesday, Wrigley said, and asked the jury, "What will you do about it?"
Several jurors cried when Sjodin's portrait was displayed midway through Wrigley's closing speech. Others looked at the floor. Rodriguez's mother, Dolores, cried during both statements. Members of the Sjodin family exchanged hugs during court breaks.
Defense attorneys also said Rodriguez deserves credit for his offer in March to plead guilty and waive all rights to appeal. The plea was rejected by the government.
Rodriguez did not testify in any phase of the trial.
He was released from prison in May 2003 after serving 23 years for assault and attempted kidnapping. He attacked a woman while he was on leave from the Minnesota state security hospital, after he was convicted in 1975 for two separate assaults on other women.
Ney told jurors that if they choose the death penalty, "you will kill the person who murdered Dru Sjodin. You will also kill the man who took care of his mother."
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