Religious leaders divided over death penalty for student’s killer

MINNEAPOLIS – The Rev. Bill Humiston sees biblical justification for executing the man charged with killing college student Dru Sjodin, if he’s convicted. And he’s not alone among religious leaders.

“It tells us in the Old Testament that the death penalty is for the removal of evil from the world,” said Humiston, of First Assembly of God Church in Crookston, hometown of the accused killer, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. “This guy has a proven track record of being repetitively evil.”

The Rev. Mark Whittemore of Pequot Lakes Baptist Church, in Sjodin’s hometown, said capital punishment would be appropriate for the person convicted of abducting and killing Sjodin, a 22-year-old University of North Dakota student.

“I was already an advocate of the death penalty,” Whittemore said. “But when you go to a candlelight vigil and stand there with the family – when you see that agony – it solidifies it.”

Other clergy members, however, said they were saddened and disappointed by federal prosecutors’ decision to seek the death penalty if Rodriguez is convicted. It would be the first capital punishment case in North Dakota in a century.

“I’m dismayed they’ve chosen to do this,” Bishop Peter Rogness of the St. Paul Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America said Friday. “It reduces the state to the same level of violence as the offender. It legitimizes the taking of human life.”

Bishop Samuel Aquila of the Catholic Diocese of Fargo issued a statement calling the decision “a troubling sign of the escalating disrespect for human life within our society, which erodes a culture of life.”

Aquila added that the federal decision runs counter to what most citizens want in North Dakota and Minnesota. The last execution in Minnesota, a hanging, occurred in 1906. The Legislature abolished capital punishment five years later.

The decision in Rodriguez’s case came after Drew Wrigley, U.S. attorney for North Dakota, and Tom Heffelfinger, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, made an unusual joint recommendation to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Archbishop Harry Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis also objected to the decision to seek the death penalty, said the Rev. Kevin McDonough, vicar general of the archdiocese.

The leader of Minnesota’s largest Jewish congregation, Temple Israel in Minneapolis, said she, too, disagrees with the decision.

“Killing someone who has killed seems like a cultural response that promotes the violence,” Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman said. “And revenge is short-lived, if that’s the goal, because nothing can bring back the loved one.”

Linda Walker, Sjodin’s mother, said last week that the family supports the decision to seek the death penalty.

Several religious leaders said Scripture appears to justify the death penalty.

“From a biblical standpoint, there are grace and forgiveness regarding a sinner’s activities, but there are also consequences,” Whittemore said. “When you’ve taken a life and you have the kind of record this man has, the death penalty would be in line with Old Testament law.”

Other clerics rejected that argument.

“If someone is to take the Old Testament literally, then we’re back to cutting off hands