It was this tragic abduction, torture and murder case of 22 year old university student Dru Sjodin that got me involved with the internet. While she was still missing her family was hoping she was alive and put up a forum on Dru's behalf. This was the first forum I ever joined. www.grandforksherald.com/news/crime-and-courts/3858344-cost-defending-incarcerating-alfonso-rodriguez-jr-climbs-above-15Cost of defending, incarcerating Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. climbs above $1.5 millionOct. 11, 2015
FARGO -- In the case of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., the price of seeking justice has been pricey.
The cost of his legal defense in federal court combined with the cost of incarcerating him has climbed above $1.5 million -- a bill that's footed by taxpayers.
This cost has been no doubt influenced by the fact that a jury sentenced Rodriguez to death after finding him guilty of the 2003 kidnapping and killing of Dru Sjodin, a Grand Forks college student.
"Everything about a death-penalty case is more expensive," said Richard Dieter, senior program director for the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center. "Because you've got to prove the guilty verdict, and you've got to prove that this deserves the death penalty."
Rodriguez, 62, has not been able to afford a lawyer, so court-appointed attorneys have defended him since federal prosecutors indicted him in 2004.
In the U.S. District Court of North Dakota, Rodriguez's defense during his trial and his subsequent appeals has reached a cost of $1,057,711, according to Todd Dudgeon, deputy in charge of the federal clerk of court's office in Fargo.
This bill includes the price of paying attorneys, investigators and experts, as well as travel expenses. It will keep increasing as Rodriguez continues his current appeal, which is set for a Jan. 13 hearing in Fargo.
Another $157,987 was spent to defend Rodriguez in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis where he filed an unsuccessful appeal in 2007, court records show.
Added up, Rodriguez's defense costs in his federal death-penalty case exceed $1.2 million, a figure that doesn't include the cost of his defense while facing state charges after his arrest.
'Doing justice'
Much of that $1.2 million has been paid to private attorneys appointed to defend Rodriguez. What's not reflected in that amount is the cost of the time that federal public defenders have invested in the case.
Currently, two federal public defenders from Minnesota are among the attorneys representing Rodriguez. Those defenders don't bill the court for their work, Dudgeon said. The cost of their time is paid through their salaries.
Another ambiguous part of the price tag is how much the government has spent to prosecute Rodriguez.
Dieter said that typically whatever the defense spends on a case, the prosecution will spend that much or more. "Any expert the defense puts on, the prosecution is going to counter with their expert," he said, adding that prosecutors are "paid high salaries, they use more resources, and they have a higher burden of proof."
Katherian Roe, chief federal public defender for Minnesota, and Chris Myers, acting U.S. Attorney for North Dakota, both declined to comment on how much their respective offices have spent on Rodriguez's case. Myers did say that the prosecutors in his office are passionate about their cases and many often work past 5 p.m.
"It's not about billable hours, it's about doing justice," he said. "All of the employees put in extra hours, much of which is without compensation, because they love what they do."
No 'windfall'
By the end of Rodriguez's trial in September 2006, the cost of his defense totaled $905,365, which consisted of $712,449 in attorney fees, $169,212 in investigative and expert services and $23,704 in travel expenses, Dudgeon said.
At the time, Richard Ney, a Kansas lawyer appointed to defend Rodriguez, said that his law firm lost money on the case. "If somebody thinks there's a big windfall, they're mistaken," Ney said.
Judging by a 2008 federal study, the cost of Rodriguez's trial defense was above average. The study found that the average defense cost for a trial in a federal death-penalty case was $620,932 -- about eight times that of a federal murder case in which prosecutors didn't seek the death penalty.
There's no recent data on the prosecution costs or overall costs of federal death-penalty cases, which have led to three executions in the past 50 years and placed another 62 defendants, including Rodriguez, on death row.
From the time Rodriguez was federally indicted in May 2004 to February 2007, he was held in the Cass County Jail at a cost of $88,840, which included his cell fee, medical expenses and overtime for federal marshals, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
In 2007, Rodriguez was moved to a high-security U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where federal death-row inmates are kept. Based on the Bureau of Prison's average costs of housing an inmate, it costs taxpayers an estimated total of $253,061 to house Rodriguez there.
However, that's a cost that could be significantly higher. There's no data on the average cost of housing a federal death-row inmate. But last year, a Kansas study revealed that the annual cost of housing state inmates sentenced to death was more than twice that of housing inmates in the general prison population.