Jason Ravnsborg, the South Dakota attorney general who ran over and killed a man on a road in 2020, was convicted Tuesday in an impeachment trial by state lawmakers, effectively ending his career.
The South Dakota Senate voted 24-9 to affirm the one-count count against Ravnsborg, gathering the two-thirds majority needed to convict him and remove him from office. He was also convicted of a second count, 31-2, and two 33-0 votes prevented him from returning to office.
Two of the 35 senators, a Democrat and a Republican, did not attend the trial. Republicans have a 32-3 majority in the state Senate.
Instead of offering important revelations at trial, prosecutors criticized Ravnsborg as a liar who lied about what happened the night of the fatal crash, and again in the months that followed.
“We’ve heard better lies from 5-year-olds,” said prosecutor Mark Vargo.
Perhaps the only bombshell of the trial was speculation by North Dakota Bureau of Investigation agent Arnie Rummel that Ravnsborg may have contemplated fleeing the scene where he killed Joe Boever on Highway 14 of the U.S. on September 12, 2020. Rummel and Agent Joe Arenz were taken away. to investigate the fatal crash, as the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation reports to the Attorney General.
Rummel said Tuesday that Ravnsborg did not stop his vehicle immediately after hitting Boever, but rolled for seven seconds, or 613 feet; the agent suggested he might have stopped at about 175 feet.
When he called 911 just after the crash, the then attorney general said he wasn’t sure who or what he hit and agreed with a dispatcher who suggested he might have been a deer. But when he testified before a special legislative committee earlier this year, Rummel said he was convinced Ravnsborg saw Boever’s body right away.
“He went through a lit flashlight,” he said. “There’s a body that’s two feet from the road and it’s obviously dead and it’s all white, there’s no blood pumping to it, and the fact [is] White is thoughtful, I think I should see it. “
Senate Democratic Leader Troy Heinert, speaking just before the vote, said he believed Ravnsborg knew he had beaten and killed one person. “He knew it,” Heinert said. “I knew something terrible had happened and I had to answer for it and I panicked.”
Vargo, in his final argument, told senators it was his duty to convict the attorney general. “By deed and word, Jason Ravnsborg has lost his right to be attorney general of this great state,” he said.
The defense did not present any witnesses, but refuted the points made by the investigators and questioned the authority of the State Senate to remove the Attorney General from office.
Ravnsborg was present, but did not testify.
“We chose not to call him a witness,” said Sioux Falls defense attorney Mike Butler. “I won’t go any further.”
In his concluding remarks, Butler asked if Ravnsborg could be fired for a driving offense, as he was not directly involved in his job as attorney general. “It must be a serious offense,” he said. “The Senate should not be reduced to the role of traffic court.”
Governor Kristi Noem, who is under investigation by the Ravnsborg office for her use of state aircraft and her involvement in her daughter’s efforts to obtain a real estate appraiser’s license, will appoint a replacement to complete the last six months of the Ravnsborg mandate. He has long made it very clear that he believed Ravnsborg should resign, and the dispute between them often becomes very personal.
The governor, who is running for a second term, did not attend the trial, but she probably watched him closely, as her offices are in the same building. He did not immediately announce who he would appoint as interim attorney general. Former Attorney General Marty Jackley, who ran against Noem for the 2018 Republican nomination for governor, is now looking for his former job, and he and Noem have supported each other.
Ravnsborg killed Boever on his way home to Pierre, the state capital, on September 12, 2020, after attending a Republican event.
Boever died almost instantly after being hit, with his right leg amputated when he was hit by the attorney general’s private car. His body rode over him, his face broken by the windshield and his broken glasses landing inside the vehicle.
The dismissed attorney general has repeatedly said that he did not see the man’s face a few inches from his and that he had no idea what he had hit. Hyde County Sheriff Mike Volek, who lived nearby, answered a 911 call from Ravnsborg. He provided Ravnsborg with a car to drive, and the attorney general went to Pierre.
The next day, Ravnsborg returned to Highmore to leave the car and said he discovered Boever’s body.
Ravnsborg, whose long history of driving offenses was revealed after the fatal crash, was eventually charged with three misdemeanors: making an illegal lane change, using a telephone while driving, and negligent driving charges. None were directly related to hitting and killing Boever.
Nearly a year after the fatal crash, he reached a guilty plea deal, did not oppose the illegal lane change and used his cell phone while driving. The charge of negligent driving was dismissed.
He never appeared in court. Instead, he was fined $ 1,000, ordered to pay $ 3,742 in court costs, and ordered to perform “a major public service event” in each of the next five years.
For months, lawmakers showed little evidence of any appetite for dismissal. But on April 4, the South Dakota Department of Public Safety issued a report on the crash, and two days later, a pair of highway patrols offered lawmakers a damning briefing. The new details increased pressure on Republican lawmakers to seek their own.
The night before the House voted in favor of the removal, Ravnsborg published a letter he sent to lawmakers, as well as a document asking questions about the case and offering his opinion. She blamed Noem for pressuring him to resign, saying she felt compelled to remain in office to investigate her conduct as governor.
Noem responded to Ravnsborg’s complaints on Twitter.
“The Attorney General wants to do this on me to distract members of the House, when the question before them is whether he should be the one most responsible for enforcing state law. He killed an innocent man, he lied about the events of that evening and abused his charge to cover it up. “
The vote to remove him was very tight, as the House of Representatives acted to remove Ravnsborg, a Republican in the first term, with a 36-31-3 vote. Dismissal required a majority of votes in the 70-member body, and 36 was the minimum. All eight Democrats voted in favor of impeachment, while 28 of the 62 Republicans joined. Three did not vote.
Ravnsborg has reached an out-of-court settlement with Jenny Boever, the widow of the man she killed. He says he apologized to the family, but Joe Boever’s cousin Jenny Boever and Nick Nemec said they had never heard of him. They attended the trial on Tuesday, as did other relatives and some state officials.
Nemec, a former Democratic lawmaker, attended all the courts and legislative hearings, and was dissatisfied with how it went.
“A lot of people across the state have told me that there are two justice systems, one for the average person like Joe Boever, one for the important people,” he told The Daily Beast in April. “If there was a uniform justice system, Ravnsborg would be in prison.”