On Thanksgiving eve 2003, Dru Sjodin disappeared from the Columbia Mall parking lot in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Early evidence didn’t look promising. Investigators found the 22-year-old’s car in a parking lot with a knife sheath beside it. A few days after the disappearance, police found one of her shoes across the Red Lake River in Crookston, Minnesota, under a bypass. Sjodin’s family wasn’t giving up, but by the end of the year, police knew they were most likely looking for a body. Full Article
Clearly this program was biased to begin with. Why not commit all offenders who use violence in committing their crimes? Chances are a drug dealer, a drunk driver, a domestic abuser or a thief would be more likely to cause murder or mayhem than someone convicted of a sex crime. In essence, they were committing the offender for a particular manner of death, not the violence itself. Yet, if all the violent offenders were on a commitment program, it would not last as long as the MSOP; it would soon bankrupt the State and have crowds of people decrying it as unconstitutional. We wouldn’t be having this discussion.