50 years ago, North Dakota abolished the death penalty. It's been a controversial choice.

Jun. 5—GRAND FORKS — There were only eight recorded executions in North Dakota before the state officially abolished the death penalty 50 years ago. While the last execution happened more than a century ago, debate surrounding the death penalty persists today.

"Death penalties are clearly constitutional," said North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley. "That's always been the case in the United States. It's been affirmed again and again."

Years before he was elected attorney general, Wrigley was a federal prosecutor in Alfonso Rodriguez Jr.'s case. In 2003, Rodriguez kidnapped Dru Sjodin from Grand Forks, took her across state lines and murdered her.

Rodriguez was initially sentenced to death in the case, but in recent months the U.S. Attorney General ordered prosecutors to withdraw the death penalty. Rodriguez was re-sentenced to life in prison.

The withdrawal was "a grave affront to justice and to the hearts and souls of all who loved and cared for Dru Sjodin," Wrigley said in March.

During Rodriguez's trial, Wrigley sensed widespread public support for the death penalty.

"When (the death penalty is) narrowly focused, and deals with what we'll call 'the worst of the worst', — for lack of a shorter way to say it — there's actually very wide-ranging support, even in a state like North Dakota," Wrigley said. "... What's unfortunate though, when that's the analysis, is that it's not on the books in the state."

Not everyone agrees that the death penalty is a just punishment, though.

There is a clear trend in the U.S. that states are moving away from use of the death penalty, according to Robin Maher, executive director at the Death Penalty Information Center. The trend exists outside the U.S. as well — four countries abolished the death penalty in 2022: Papua New Guinea, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Zambia.

Some reasons for abolishment include a lack of evidence that the death penalty works as a deterrent, as well as racism, mistakes and high costs.

"Capital cases are some of the most expensive trials that there are," said Maher, whose organization is a national nonprofit serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment.

Most people facing the death penalty can't afford legal representation, so the state has to pay for a defendant's lawyers, in addition to covering the cost of prosecution. Other factors, such as added security and solitary confinement also create additional costs.

Pre-trial investigations, jury selections and trials for capital cases are much more time-consuming and consequently more expensive. According to Maher, trials with the option of the death penalty can last more than four times longer than trials without it.

"Unlike any other criminal case, they require two separate proceedings," Maher said. "One to determine guilt, and the second to determine the sentence."

After sentencing, prisoners are entitled to file appeals in their case. The appeal process is very lengthy and costly, but essential, as some inmates have been proved innocent just hours before their execution, Maher said.

"A lot of states have been troubled, lawmakers have been troubled, by the mistakes that they're seeing in death penalty cases," Maher said. "Because these are such difficult cases — very high profile — and they require very skilled, experienced lawyers, it's very easy for there to be mistakes. And these are mistakes that can't be undone after an execution occurs."

When Rodriguez, a Latino, was sentenced to death in 2007, he was among 57.8% of death row inmates who were people of color, despite making up less than half of the U.S. population, according to 2019 data from a Death Penalty Information Center report.

"Research has clearly demonstrated that the race of the defendant and the victim often influence who is charged with the death penalty, and who is sentenced to death," Maher said.

According to a report the Death Penalty Information Center released in 2020, there have been 1,147 executions carried out on convicts with white victims since 1976. Conversely, there were 200 executions for convicts with black victims, 100 with Latinx victims, 43 with victims of multiple races (including white), one with victims of multiple races (none of which were white) and 31 with victims of other races not listed.

Rodriguez's victim, Sjodin, was white.

Amy J. Stichman, an associate professor at North Dakota State, said some states have put a moratorium on the death penalty — or abolished it altogether — because they felt there was no way to utilize it without bias.

"Maybe they thought there was some discrimination in how death sentences were decided," Stichman said. "Maybe they thought that there's just no way of keeping bias out of the decision making process."

In North Dakota's history — and in the Dakota Territory —

eight people have been sentenced to death

, all in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

According to State Historian and Archivist Frank Vyzralek, in 1865, the Dakota Territory considered all murder punishable by death, and murder charges were not separated by degree.

When the law was amended in 1883, it became a jury's responsibility to determine when to sentence a defendant to death. The recommended penalty for first-degree murder was either execution or life imprisonment, and the recommended penalty for second-degree murder was between 10 and 30 years of incarceration.

* George Miller, convicted of murdering a woman and her son, was the territory's first recorded execution in 1885.

* Albert F. Bomberger was executed in 1894 after raping one member of the Kreider family and murdering six others.

* In 1899, James W. Cole was executed for the murder of 14-year-old Sophronia Ford.

* Hans Thorpe was executed in 1900 for the murder of his wife, Ida Thorpe.

* Also in 1900, Ira O. Jenkins was executed for the murder of August Stark.

* William R. Ross was executed in 1903 for the murder of Thomas Walsh.

* In 1901, Jacob Bassanella murdered Anton Anderson. Bassanella escaped from jail. He was caught after murdering Anton Heilinger, and was executed in 1903.

* North Dakota's last recorded execution was John Rooney, who was executed in 1905 for the murder of Harold Sweet.

In 1915, North Dakota removed the death penalty as an option, except in cases of either treason or murder committed by an inmate already serving a life sentence.

The Torson bill, which proposed the death penalty's abolishment, included a condition that inmates sentenced to life imprisonment couldn't be pardoned within 80% of their life expectancy. This was later lowered to 50%.

According to the March 5, 1915, edition of the Bottineau Courant, "there was considerable debate" on whether inmates imprisoned for life would try to escape, and even kill guards while doing so, "knowing that they could be given no more severe sentence than they are already serving."

F.B. Streeter, of the Emmons County Record, wrote in the March 18, 1915, edition that "there should be no legal methods of taking a human life."

Streeter wrote that convicted murderers can be removed from society without being killed. He also noted that some have even been found innocent of their crimes after they were executed.

Though North Dakota didn't completely abolish the death penalty until 1973, its last execution took place 68 years earlier.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the federal death penalty was found unconstitutional in 1972. Following its reinstatement in 1988, there have been only 16 federal executions — 13 of which took place between July 2020 and January 2021.

When Rodriguez was sentenced to death in 2007, he became the 50th federal inmate on death row.

"I think one thing to remember is how infrequently the Justice Department seeks the death penalty," Wrigley said.

In federal cases, the death penalty can only be considered if the defendant has both a high degree of culpability for their crime and at least one statutory aggravating factor. Prior to 2003, Rodriguez was a three times convicted sex offender — an aggravating factor in his case, Wrigley said.

"He had just spent 23 and a half years (incarcerated) for an attempted abduction of another woman," Wrigley said.

Beyond culpability and aggravating factors, the jury must reach a unanimous verdict, and it did. Years later, though, Rodriguez's death sentence was overturned by Judge Ralph R. Erickson.

This was decided largely due to a medical examiner's testimony being found unreliable.

Wrigley said, looking back, he would've made "very similar" arguments for the death penalty, despite the sentence being overturned.

"She was completely incapacitated, and if he beat her and left her there to freeze to death in the middle of a winter night, I don't like his chances of avoiding the death penalty any more than if she was killed more quickly, and suffered less," said Wrigley. "Because she would have suffered a lot more if she was left out there to freeze to death."

In the years following Rodriguez's conviction, Wrigley's thoughts on the death sentence haven't changed "whatsoever."

"He literally murdered her, I believe to this day, because he knew he'd be going back to jail for the rest of his life," Wrigley said. "The other times he left his victims alive and they testified against him, and he wasn't going to have that happen again. So his best chance to get away was just to kill her."