Death Sentnece "Eye for an eye" What do you think?

FARGO, North Dakota -- Jurors here sentenced a convicted sex offender to death yesterday.

Alfonso Rodriguez, 53, of Crookston, Minnesota, received the sentence for kidnapping and killing University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin. Her body was found in a Minnesota ravine nearly five months after she disappeared.

It was North Dakota's first death penalty case in more than a century. The state does not have the death penalty but it is allowed in federal cases.

"We hope the need does not arise for another 100 years," U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley said. "The defendant's acts of the last three decades have brought us to this place at this time," he said, referring to Rodriguez's earlier convictions for assaults on women going back to 1975.

Rodriguez looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the sentence was announced. His lawyer, Richard Ney, said he will first file a motion for a new trial and if that is denied, he will appeal.

"A life is worth saving, no matter who it is," Ney said.

The jury reached its decision after more than 1 1/2 days of deliberations. The same federal jury convicted Rodriguez on Aug. 30 on a charge of kidnapping resulting in Sjodin's death.

Rodriguez's mother, Dolores, and sister, Ileanna Noyes, cried as the verdict was announced, as did a number of the jurors.

Members of Sjodin's family looked sombre and stared straight ahead.

"I know it wasn't an easy decision for the jurors," Sjodin's mother, Linda Walker, said afterward, her voice shaking. "But Dru's voice was heard today."

Sjodin, 22, of Pequot Lakes, Minnesota, disappeared from a Grand Forks shopping mall parking lot on Nov. 22, 2003. Her body was found the following April in a ravine near Crookston. Authorities said she had been beaten, raped and stabbed.

Rodriguez, who got out of prison about six months before the killing, was charged under federal law because Sjodin was taken across state lines.

Wrigley, in his statements to jurors, said the death penalty would be the "right thing, in the right case." He stood near her portrait and asked for justice.

Ney, asked the jury for mercy after calling psychologists and Rodriguez's family to talk about his childhood of poverty, abuse and exposure to farm chemicals. Ney also said Rodriguez had been anxious about being released from prison after serving more than 20 years for assaults on three women in 1975 and 1980.

Walker and Allan Sjodin, Dru's father, said they could have accepted a sentence of life in prison.

"Whatever would have happened, we would have been equally satisfied," Allan Sjodin said. "For Dru's sake, this needed to happen."

Sjodin's boyfriend, Chris Lang, said jurors made the right decision for Dru.

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The above articel is dated Saturday September 23rd and is the property of Edmunton Sun.com Copywrite 2006......

I wanted to get the opinion of chrsitians and other denominations and religions to the following question(s)...

1. Is the death sentence acceptable in your belief system.

2. Does man have the right to take life when life is taken.

3. Should mercy be granted to the accussed of a swift death, or a death in the same nature as the victim. "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth".