North Dakota cracks down on sex offenders

BISMARCK, N.D. -- From the moment he enters the sex offender's apartment, parole officer Brian Weigel is looking for contraband.

He kicks aside a blanket on the floor, peers down, and spies a video game rated for adult players -- complete with buxom computer-generated women on the cover. Despite protests from the man who lives here, the video game is coming with Weigel.

In the year since college student Dru Sjodin was abducted from a North Dakota parking lot and killed, allegedly by a convicted sex offender, the state has worked to make its sex offender laws among the strictest in the nation.

Officers such as Weigel have to determine whether an offender is sticking to restrictions that often include a ban on sexual material in the home.

''There's a real threat," said Weigel, one of five sex-offender specialists in the state's parole and probation division. ''If these guys reoffend, there's going to be another real victim out there."

Weigel's unit is new, part of the state's heightened enforcement since Sjodin was abducted a year ago today. The 22-year-old University of North Dakota student's body was found last spring in a ravine in Minnesota.

The man charged with abducting Sjodin and killing her, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., is a convicted sex offender who had been released from prison six months before she disappeared. He has pleaded not guilty to a federal charge of kidnapping resulting in death. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

The passage of a year has not softened the blow for Sjodin's family. ''Every day weighs heavy in our hearts," said Linda Walker, Sjodin's mother. ''There isn't one day that we don't think of her, even from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep."

The case drew national attention as volunteers, National Guardsmen, and law enforcement officers searched for months looking for Sjodin. Her body was not found until after the snow melted.

On Friday, the US Senate endorsed a bill called Dru's Law, which would establish a national public database of sex offenders and require strict monitoring of high-risk offenders for a year after their release from prison.

The bill was introduced by Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, who said other senators remembered Sjodin's abduction.

''The entire country was looking for Dru Sjodin," Dorgan said.

The case was particularly troubling in North Dakota and in Minnesota, where Rodriguez lived, because the convicted rapist had been released although he had been classified as a Level 3 offender, which means he had the highest risk of committing another sex crime.

Both states have since moved to crack down on sex offenders. In North Dakota, the new parole unit is partnered with an expanded program at the state psychiatric hospital in Jamestown for the most serious sexual predators, who are recommended for civil commitment after their release. The number of people civilly committed has doubled to 23 in less than a year.

Since Sjodin's death, two commissions in Minnesota have been working on new sentencing guidelines. One plan would double the maximum sentences for sex crimes and impose a life term on any repeat sex offender. It also would set up a new board to review the cases of inmates who have served their minimum sentences.

More restrictions may be on the way. When North Dakota legislators convene their 2005 session, they will face a list of proposals from a task force launched by Governor John Hoeven. Among them are life sentences without parole for sexual offenses that result in death and supervised probation for all other felony sex offenses.

The panel also is seeking a stronger method of tracking sex offenders, using global-positioning devices that could alert authorities to an offender's location, said Duane Houdek, lawyer for Hoeven.

While North Dakota's crime rate remains low, getting tough on sex offenders will help preserve that security, state Representative Lois Delmore said.