Posted on 11/25/2004 2:01:46 AM PST by Vigilanteman
ST. PAUL - Minnesota and Polk County officials should pay for allowing Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. to go free, the family of slain college student Dru Sjodin says through an attorney.
Letters sent to the state and Polk County indicate the family probably will sue "for well in excess" of $1 million. Attorney Timothy R. Murphy spelled out why the family believes officials erred in freeing Rodriguez after he served a 23-year prison sentence.
The letter indicates state and county officials should have tried committing Rodriguez to a state hospital, where he would undergo sex offender treatment. That often is what happens when dangerous sex offenders finish their prison terms, but the Corrections Department did not make that recommendation in Rodriguez's case.
Murphy wrote that while his St. Paul firm continues an investigation, "it is believed the actions or inactions" of government officials contributed to Sjodin's death.
(Excerpt) Read more at in-forum.com ...
Notice the perp refused therapy when offered in prison-- so the solution is supposed to be more tax dollars to treat this perp-- whom they cannot even schedule a trial for until 2006!
Hempen necktie therapy is all this perp deserves.
Agreed, and I'd be happy to tie the knot.
However, The State cannot have two bites at the same apple. After a convict serves his sentence, the state cannot then sentence him/her to additional time involuntarily without PROVING that he/she is a danger to himself or others. He paid society for his original crime, although the price he paid would have been MUCH higher if I had had anything to say about it. The State should jave just offed this scumbag after his first conviction and have been done with it.
"The catastrophic effect that her loss has had on the heirs and next of kin cannot be measure in terms of monetary compensation," the letter said. "However, given the limitations of our civil law system, you can assume that the monetary relief we will be seeking ... will be well in excess of $1 million."
Sjodin disappeared after finishing her work shift at Victoria's Secret in the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks, N.D., on Nov. 22, 2003. Rodriguez was arrested Dec. 1, 2003. The Pequot Lakes, Minn., student's body was found April 17 outside Crookston, Minn., where Rodriguez lived with his mother.
Rodriguez, 51, remains jailed in Fargo under federal charges of a kidnapping that resulted in Sjodin's death. He pleaded not guilty, with a trial set for March 2006.
Rodriguez's arrest set off a firestorm of criticism from people who questioned why the state would let a twice-convicted sex offender loose. Even Gov. Tim Pawlenty, whose administration could have recommended Rodriguez be indefinitely committed to a state hospital, was critical of the release.
"I personally agree with the family that Alfonso Rodriguez should not have been released," the governor said in a statement released Wednesday. "I hope to work with the family to resolve this in a manner that is fair, appropriate and prompt."
Murphy sent letters to Polk County, and the attorney general, Corrections and Human Services departments at the state level, indicating all could be sued.
State officials would say little about the matter and no one from the Polk County attorney's office returned calls seeking comment. Murphy also did not return a call seeking further comment, and family members could not be reached late Wednesday.
Attorney General Mike Hatch's office appeared sympathetic about the claim.
"We are not surprised by this filing of notice of claim as we have expressed concern of the way the Minnesota Sex Offender Program has been administered," Hatch spokeswoman Leslie Sandberg said.
Hatch and his lieutenants have blamed Pawlenty's administration for allowing Rodriguez to go free. In an interview earlier this week, tears came to Hatch's eyes as he emotionally said Pawlenty's desire to keep down costs led to the release of Rodriguez and others.
"They didn't want to spend the money," Hatch said. "Some people tried to cheap it out."
Hatch, widely expected to challenge Pawlenty in the 2006 governor's race, produced an inch-and-a-half thick book listing problems with the state's sex offender system. One comment says evidence shows "the budget took priority over public safety."
Pawlenty regularly has denied money had anything to do with the release of Rodriguez. His administration is undergoing a top-to-bottom re-examination of how it handles sex offenders and he appointed an outside commission to recommend changes.
Murphy's letter indicates those actions will come too late for Sjodin. In six pages that read much like a summary of Hatch's book (although Sandberg said there was no coordination with Murphy), he laid out the basis for his case, all of which has been extensively reported in the past year.
The letter arrived in at least some state departments on Monday, but was kept quiet until Wednesday afternoon.
Murphy told about Rodriguez being sentenced in 1980 to more than 20 years for an attempted kidnapping. While in prison under the 1980 sentence, Rodriguez refused to take sex offender treatment, which the state cannot force on an inmate.
The Corrections Department should have known Rodriguez was "a grave danger to all women that he could have contact with if he were ever released," Murphy's letter said.
The lawyer said Rodriguez should have been committed to a state hospital before his sentence ended or soon afterwards.
But Murphy wrote that the sex offender program was approaching its capacity in 2000. That year, legislators approved adding 100 beds to state hospital wards housing sex offenders, but the Human Services Department said "more tax dollars are necessary to house sex offenders unless a solution is found to 'slow the growth' of this population," he added.
Murphy agreed with Hatch that a money shortage convinced state officials to avoid seeking commitments to state hospitals.
It costs the state nearly $300 a day for each sex offender.
Murphy pointed out that when the newly-elected Pawlenty appointed Corrections Commissioner Joan Fabian, he told reporters the Correction Department budget would be "on the table for cuts, like every other area."
Since Rodriguez's arrest, though, Pawlenty has said he wants to increase spending on sex offender prison space and treatment programs.
In 2001, state psychologist Dwight Close recommended not committing Rodriguez to a hospital. Pawlenty and Fabian have said they relied on that recommendation, which occurred before they took office.
In late 2002 and early 2003, Dr. Anita Schlank, who headed the sex offender program, was told the program was growing too fast, she later testified to senators. Schlank said she was ordered to find a way to put 40 sex offenders then in state hospitals into less security community housing instead. She testified the order came because of budget problems.
Schlank resigned instead of following her orders.
Pawlenty administration officials at first denied Schlank was told to make a plan to move offenders, but later backed away from the denial.
Rodriguez underwent another evaluation on Jan. 10, 2003. Murphy wrote that Close this time said he had "special concerns" about Rodriguez.
Both Close and Schlank could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Murphy also said Hatch's office received a copy of Rodriguez's records as his May 1, 2003, release date approached. The attorney did not offer evidence the Polk County attorney's office ever received the documents, but Murphy said it should have known Rodriguez was a danger.
"The Polk County Attorney's Office did not do what it could have or should have to either independently or collaboratively with the DOC (Corrections Department) make sure that Rodriguez was committed as a person who always had been and was still a grave danger to the community as a violent sexual predator," Murphy wrote.
Upon Rodriguez's return to Crookston in May 2003, law enforcement held a community notification to teach the public safety tips for living near the city's first Level 3 sex offender, those deemed most likely to re-offend. More than 100 people showed up for the meeting.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Don Davis at (651) 290-0707
2006!! Why does this take so long and at such expense? It only took the degenerate an hour to commit this act yet the State can't get around to disposing of the rubbish for over two years! The money wasted on this elongated process could be better directed towards preventing the next State sponsored release and ensuing outrage. Obviously the system has been taken over by the employees who are now in the position of writing their own paychecks. Meanwhile, the public has to endure the consequences of this mismanagement and incompetence.
I agree. This story made such an impact on me that I think about it often (Of course, most missing persons stories bother me). The good I can see coming out of this is if families starting suing the sh** out of the state when they let this kind of vile sludge get 25 years or 10 years on offenses that clearly should be death, maybe lawmakers will start getting their head in their work when states all over the place are loosing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Here in the USA, us; we; the "people" are "The State".
No amount of money will bring Drew back. She had no children to provide for. "The State" doesn't have any money; the taxpayers do. Any settlement will be paid from taxpayer funds. The taxpayers didn't let this slug go; State bureaucrats (and they won't be paying) did. As we all well know, spending the taxpayers money doesn't bother a bureaucrat a bit.
The issue here is that a) Politicians have to be personally held responsible for these kinds of injustices, and b) so do the bureaucrats that decide who gets let out for bugetary reasons and who doesn't.
We cannot put every offender into jail for life - there is not enough money for it. We can either execute the serious offenders (which wouldn't hurn my feelings a bit) or we can lock them up for life and only let lesser criminals out of jail when the budget demands it.
In any case, a monetary settlement helps nobody but Drew's parents, and it bites all the citizens in the pocketbook. Thats the bottom line.
From my perspective, this lawsuit begs the question: 'How effective is sex offender treatment, anyway?' Being a cynic, I'm supposing that a personality like Rodriguez would only be delayed in committing what he was inevitably going to do...and that while Dru Sjodin might still live, another young woman would not.
While I cannot imagine the grief the Sjodin family is enduring, socking it to Minnesota taxpayers isn't going to make that grief go away. The fact of the matter is that dangerous, deranged personalites live amongst us and the state cannot ever make each & every one of us perfectly safe.
Now, now, everyone is being much to hard on this downtrodden, society-failed-me, my-mother-beat-me-when-as-a-21-year-old-I-peed-my-bed convict.
Not!
As was written earlier, the state can only have "one bite of the apple" BUT what the state could've done with this Pervert Poster Child was to have him serve his 20+ years in the general population of the baddest prison in Minnesota . . . and if they don't have any "bad" ones they could've transferred him to any of our fine facilities in Texas. He might not have found Jesus or attended any of the useless Sexual Modification courses or been helped in any way . . . but, trust me, if he survived, he wouldn't have survived with the equipment necessary to commit any more rapes.
I used to not be a vengeful man . . . I used to even doubt whether the death penalty served it's stated purpose of cutting down on vicious crimes . . . BUT THEN I visited a high school classmate who was on death row . . . at the behest of his victim's family and friends. They wanted to know the details of her death. Why? The mother had nightmares for over 20 years . . . she thought knowing of the "last moments" of her beloved daughter might help the nightmares pass.
I was speaking at an event near the family's home when a friend of the family in the audience learned we . . . the pervert murderer and I . . . were from the same hometown, and were near the same age. Yes, I knew him. Yes, it shames me to admit I thought of him as a friend at the time. HELL YES, I answered when the woman from the audience asked me if I would try to talk to him.
It took forever to get my visit approved. My entire attitude about the death penalty in particular and crime & punishment in general changed with the first sentence out of his mouth. He smiled smugly, a smile some of the gal's in our school 20 years earlier had thought was cute, then said, "Hey, man, tell me about what's happened to _____ _____."
What did this jackass want to know? He wanted me to detail the histories of the "HOT" girls from school. He wanted to know which ones were married, which ones weren't, which ones I'd made out with, which ones . . . You get the drift.
He wanted me to help him gather information so he could get some sexual thrills out of the sick imagery he would create in his own mind.
I told him, forgive my language but I think it's important that you hear the EXACT quote . . . "You sick sonofabitch, I'd strangle you with my bare f'ing hands if I could get through this glass."
He'd already beat the system for over 20 years and I'll be damn if I was going to give him any ammo to make his time enjoyable in the least.
Anyway . . . our visit went downhill from there. He became petulant, challenging me to read about his case and how he'd "been screwed." Evidently, he thought this was a "friendly" visit and that I would help fight his legal battles on the outside. He was wrong. I knew EVERYTHING about his case and the appeals he'd won were of the technical variety that makes simple citizens like you and me absolutely furious at the judicial system. NONE of his appeals dealt with guilt or innocence issues.
I told him why I'd come. He laughed, saying, "I don't talk about my case. To anyone." I leaned as close to the glass as I could, then said, "I'll spend every minute of the rest of your life trying to get you returned to the General Population if you don't answer my questions." I'd learned from my local DA before the trip that "technically speaking" he shouldn't be enjoying the anonymity and protection of death row because of the legal situation his case was in.
For the first time since I'd arrived he shut up. Shut completely up. All the color drained from his face. His beedy little eyes squinted to BB's. Sweat started beading up on his forehead. Rapists and ex-cop wannabes don't fare too well in the General Population.
He said, "Guard, this visit is terminated."
Then he stood up and walked out.
Did I screw up? Obviously I did because I didn't get what I came for.
What did I do? I lied to the family. I knew enough about the case at this point to be able to make up a story that I thought would fly with the family.
Was I wrong for doing so? Probably . . . but I'd just been face-to-face with evil incarnate and I KNEW HE WAS GETTING SOME KIND OF THRILL FROM THE FAMILY'S PAIN. So I lied . . . and the mother's nightmares went away.
But I was troubled for years. Hell, I'd been friends with this pervert. I knew he was . . . uhhhh . . . "different" but that's sometimes cool to high school kids, right?
But I learned from this little visit that the punishment NEVER, EVER fits the crime.
He was on death row for 27 years . . . then he still missed being executed because he died in prison. Cases like his are why us Texans have screamed and hollered for decades to get the death penalty cases carried out in a reasonable amount of time.
So . . . does the death penalty deter crime? I ain't got a clue . . . but I don't care any longer. Those executed damn sure won't commit another one.
My suggestion for sentencing criminals is this . . . the pantywaist, tree-hugging, criminal-loving-and-excusing liberals have made a mockery of our justice system. It's time for the grown-ups . . . you and I . . . to take charge and demand some JUSTICE FOR THE VICTIMS AND THEIR FAMILIES.
I understand intellectually that offering inmates some inducements to "play nice with others" makes prison guards' and prison administrators' lives easier . . . and in the odd, infrequent-as-hell case a convict might even be changed so he or she can become a productive citizen when released . . . but I suggest this -- IS THAT OUR REAL GOAL OF PUNISHING THOSE WHO VIOLATE SOCIETY'S LAWS? To give them easy time? To "re-educate" them? To latch on to all the liberal feel-good policies and tactics, the blame-not-the-criminals-but-the-evil-society-surrounding-them BS that pervades our prisons today?
Or are we trying to punish those who won't follow society's laws? Or are we trying to flesh out some form of justice for the victims and their families?
I think the latter. I think that just as the victims and/or their families often-times have a say in the sentencing phases of the trials . . . I think they should also have a major say in the parole and releasing phases as well. Granted, they're more apt to be harsh than "disinterested" parties might be . . . but haven't they earned this right? They were, after all, the ones who were harmed MOST by the criminal's act. I'm not saying they should be the ultimate arbiter . . . but their input should weigh heavily on the proceedings.
Sorry this was so long . . . but this is a passionate topic to me.
If anyone wants to meet evil incarnate . . . FReepmail me and I'll give you my "friend's" name and particulars and some websites to check out. Since I lied to the family . . . I'd rather them not know I lied . . . it's only been a few years and the topic's still fresh in my part of the world. The family has been through enough hell.
I agree. If the family wants compensation for loss of income due to missing work looking for Dru , private investigators, family therapy, etc, I'm fine with that.
They can get compensation from the MN Crime Victims Reparations Board(no lawyers needed and fairly simple application process).Suing the state is like blaming your neighbors. The "State" will never go without, they always
get theirs. We, on the other hand, don't have the option of
just upping our income by fiat.We get the government we deserve:MN is the lowest state in incarceration rates and
we don't have capital punishment. We also spend more than most on prison accomodations. We also import many sex offenders for (so-called) treatment.It all adds up. Had Donald Bluhm got the needle the first or 2nd time he raped, we would not have had Katie Pourier die.
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