The attorneys for Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. have challenged the government's death penalty case on several new grounds, most prominently that prosecutors withheld too much information from grand jurors.
Rodriguez, 52, is scheduled to stand trial July 6 in Fargo on a federal charge of kidnapping resulting in the death of college student Dru Sjodin.
A grand jury indicted Rodriguez on the charge in May 2004. It was in that process where Rodriguez's attorneys, Richard Ney and Robert Hoy, based the five motions they filed this week in U.S. District Court.
U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley said Wednesday he had not yet reviewed the motions. He has 20 days to respond.
Three of the motions assail the aggravating factors that prosecutors want to use to seek the death penalty for Rodriguez, a native of Crookston, Minn.
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A fourth motion says prosecutors didn't tell the grand jury it was considering a charge punishable by death.
The fifth motion says the jury selection plan in the case is unconstitutional because it uses a juror pool that doesn't fairly represent a cross-section of the community.
Together, the motions ask U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson to dismiss the indictment, strike certain aggravating factors and special findings, and bar the death penalty.
Prosecutors accused Rodriguez of abducting the 22-year-old Sjodin in November 2003 from a mall parking lot in Grand Forks, N.D. Her body was found the following April near Crookston.
In one of the motions, Rodriguez's attorneys ask to strike victim impact statements and allegations of Rodriguez's future dangerousness from the government's plan to seek the death penalty. These "non-statutory aggravating factors" were not presented to the grand jury, so they must be stricken, the motion says.
The motions were the latest in a series of arguments made by Rodriguez's attorneys leading up to the trial.
In late November, Erickson ruled that race was not a factor in the government's decision to seek the death penalty. Last month, he ruled that investigators violated Rodriguez's rights by helping set up a meeting between the suspect and his sister shortly after his arrest. That ruling meant prosecutors can't use the conversation from the meeting as evidence.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Dave Forster at (701) 241-5538
