Man Convicted Of Plotting To Kill Minn. Prosecutor

FARIBAULT (AP) - A jury has convicted an Inver Grove Heights man of conspiring to kill Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom.

The Rice County jury convicted John Woodward Friday. Jurors acquitted Woodward on a separate count of conspiracy to commit assault against a woman. The judge dismissed another count of conspiracy to commit murder earlier in the week.

Prosecutors alleged Woodward hatched a revenge plot while he was in state prison on a drug conviction.

Woodward was convicted of trying to pay a fellow inmate to kill Backstrom, Woodward's former neighbor.

The dismissed charge alleged Woodward also tried to pay to have the judge who sentenced him killed. He was acquitted of trying to have a woman who testified against him maimed with a baseball bat.