The Senate on Thursday unanimously approved "Dru's Law," a bill sponsored by North Dakota and Minnesota lawmakers aimed at starting a national registry of sex offenders.
"It's a big step forward," said North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, author of the bill. "We need to get some momentum to deal with these sexual predators."
The bill, which would allow the public to search for offenders by ZIP code on the Internet, is named after Dru Sjodin, the University of North Dakota student kidnapped from a shopping mall and murdered two years ago.
Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. of Crookston, Minn., a convicted sex offender, has been charged in federal court with Sjodin's kidnapping resulting in death.
Dorgan said the legislation would increase the monitoring of sex offenders and give notification to state's attorneys seeking further incarceration of high-risk offenders prior to release.
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A similar version of the bill is pending in the House Judiciary Committee.
