FARGO - The cost to search for Dru Sjodin and jail the man accused in her kidnapping and death are projected at more than $217,000 - and are expected to go much higher once the case goes to trial.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. is charged in federal court with kidnapping resulting in the death of the 22-year-old college student last year. He has pleaded not guilty. Federal prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

The U.S. Marshal's Service paid Grand Forks County about $11,000 to jail Rodriguez, 51, for nearly six months after his arrest last Dec. 1, said Gary Gardner, the county's jail administrator.

Since May 12 he has been jailed in Cass County in a cell separate from other prisoners, said Jail Administrator Glenn Ellingsberg. The U.S. Marshal's Service is paying Cass County $50 a day to hold Rodriguez - totaling about $9,800 so far.

If his trial begins as planned on March 6, 2006, it will cost an additional $23,000 to jail him until then.

The search for Sjodin was expensive, too. About 170 Minnesota Guard members searched for Sjodin last December in the snow-covered countryside near Crookston, Guard spokeswoman Lt. Shannon Purvis said, costing about $147,000 in fuel, payroll, food and equipment expenses.

Sgt. 1st Class. Mike Jennens said 102 North Dakota National Guard soldiers searched for three days near Grand Forks at a cost of about $37,600.

Sjodin was last heard from Nov. 22, 2003, when she abruptly ended a cell phone call outside the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks.

After tips, interviews and search warrants led police to Rodriguez, he was arrested in the Crookston home he shared with his mother. The convicted rapist had been released from prison last year after serving 23 years for stabbing a woman and trying to abduct her off the street.

On April 17, after a five-month search, Sjodin's body was found in a ravine near a county road north of Crookston.

If Rodriguez's defense mirrors other death-eligible cases, it will cost as much as 10 times more, and his trial will last three times longer, than if federal prosecutors were seeking a life prison sentence instead, said Kevin McNalley, a Kentucky defense attorney with the Federal Death Penalty Resource Council Project. Rodriguez's trial is currently estimated to run eight weeks.

The council was established by the U.S. court system to monitor death penalty cases.

McNalley and U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett in Sioux City, Iowa, estimate that defense costs in federal death penalty cases range from $500,000 to $1 million.

The government also will rack up significant expenses for the trial, including forensic testing, expert witness testimony, documents and trial exhibits.

One of Rodriguez's two court-appointed attorneys, Robert Hoy, of West Fargo, expects his client's defense to be "astronomically more expensive" given that he faces a possible death sentence.

"In a death-eligible case, there is no room for error." Hoy said. "This is all brought on by the government's desire to kill the guy.

"There are significant costs that go along with the criminal justice system," said U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley. "It's the price we pay, though, to make sure the system provides fair treatment for victims and defendants."

The government has paid Hoy and Rodriguez's other court-appointed attorney, Richard Ney, of Wichita, Kan., $70,000 in fees and about $2,500 in travel reimbursements since Wrigley took over Rodriguez's prosecution in May, said Todd Dudgeon, clerk of Fargo's federal court.

Wrigley said he couldn't put a dollar value on the government's work so far in prosecuting Rodriguez.

Many of the government's costs are fixed, he said.

"My salary is the same whether I prosecute this case or not," Wrigley said. "An enormous amount of resources are going into the preparation of the case. There's no way to calculate it."

Wrigley said he and assistant U.S. attorneys Keith Reisenauer and Norman Anderson will prosecute Rodriguez, but about 24 people in his Fargo office have had a hand in the case.