Fargo, N.D. ? A convicted sex offender on trial in North Dakota’s first death penalty case in more than a century was found guilty Wednesday of kidnapping and killing a college student who was seized from a shopping mall parking lot.

The jury in Fargo will return next week to begin hearing evidence on whether Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 53, should be executed for the slaying of 22-year-old Dru Sjodin.

North Dakota does not have capital punishment. But the case was heard in federal court, where the jury took less than four hours to reach a verdict.

Sjodin, a University of North Dakota student from Pequot Lakes, Minn., was abducted outside a Grand Forks mall in 2003. Hundreds of volunteers searched for her, but her body was not found until the following spring, in a ravine near Crookston, Minn. Rodriguez lived in Crookston at the time.