Slow grind: SD Attorney General Ravnsborg impeached, removed & barred from public office
Sextus Empiricus wrote "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small."
On Tuesday, the South Dakota state senate impeached Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, removed him from office, and barred him from holding any public office in South Dakota again. The decision is a consequence of Ravnsborg killing Joseph Boever in September 2020 while the Highmore man was walking on the shoulder of the highway where the state's top law man was paying more attention to his device than the road.
. . .Boever was walking along the north shoulder of U.S. Highway 14 just before 10:30 p.m. that Saturday night. Boever was killed almost instantly, his right leg severed when struck by the attorney general’s private car. His body rode atop it, with his face busting through the windshield and his broken glasses landing inside the vehicle.
Ravnsborg has repeatedly said he didn’t see the man’s face inches from his own, and had no idea what he had struck. . . .
Prosecution witness and North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Arnie Rummel, supervisor of the Ravnsborg criminal investigation, make a point that hadn’t stood out to me in this case yet. Rummel noted that, immediately after his fatal crash, according to phone GPS data, Ravnsborg slowed his car from the 68 mile-per-hour impact speed to 11 miles per hour. Then, for seven seconds, Ravnsborg continued to roll forward, slowing from 11 mph to 7 mph. Two seconds after that, Ravnsborg finally stopped, with his left wheels, according to the crash reconstruction based on his photo of the car and evidence from the scene, back across the fog line, off the shoulder, in the driving lane.
Why did co-prosecutor Mark Vargo have Rummel raise this point? Rummel contends that this long, strange deceleration suggests that Ravnsborg knew full well that he had hit and likely killed a man. He saw Boever’s face crash through his windshield. As he finished braking, he considered feeling the scene. Only after those few seconds of a rolling stop did he decide to actually stop.
Rummel noted that parking back on the roadway was also strange behavior. There was plenty of room for Ravnsborg to drive his entire car within the shoulder, as the crash reconstruction shows he did. In those last moments before stopping, Ravnsborg appears to have moved his car back to the left, back out into the land of traffic.
Was he still thinking about fleeing, then just stopped before compounding his crime? Or was he looking to create the impression that he’d been further out toward the driving lane when he hit Boever? . . .
The South Dakota Senate has voted to remove Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg from office during his impeachment trial Tuesday.
The Senate voted to convict and remove Ravnsborg from office after hours of testimony, questioning and closing arguments for his role in the death of Joe Boever in September 2020.
The group of lawmakers needed a two-thirds majority vote or more for each of the two separate impeachment articles Ravnsborg faced, including crimes causing death and malfeasance in office, which were passed by the South Dakota House of Representatives earlier this year.
Over the course of a trial lasting 10 hours and seven minutes, the prosecution relied heavily on testimony from five witnesses, including North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NDBCI) and South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agents as well as South Dakota Highway Patrol (SDHP) troopers.
Prosecutor Mark Vargo first called Kevin Kinney, an SDHP sergeant and a crash reconstructionist, to the stand to kick off testimony with the facts of the crash.
When he first responded to the scene of the crash on Sept. 14, 2020, Kinney was in charge of troopers who were collecting evidence from the site that he'd eventually turn into a map of the crash.
"There was one piece of debris found in the lane of travel, which was found to the south of the white fog line, two inches into the lane of travel. Every other piece of evidence was completely on the shoulder or in the ditch," Kinney said. "I have an extremely high level of confidence that what we have is very accurate. ... I'm 100% confident [Ravnsborg] was driving down shoulder of the road."
Despite Kinney's certainty, in recorded interviews with NDBCI agents Arnie Rummel and Joe Arenz, which were played for Senators, Ravnsborg adamantly denied ever driving on the shoulder.
After using his opening argument to tout Ravnsborg's cooperation with law enforcement, Butler drilled Arenz on why he offered Ravnsborg the opportunity to take a polygraph test, only to never actually conduct the test.
Arenz said conversations between him and other polygraphers led him to believe the results might show Ravnsborg was being deceptive even if he was telling the truth. He agreed with the prosecution that it would be disingenuous to submit Ravnsborg to a test that may return with invalid results, instead opting to focus on Ravnsborg's statements that contrasted with evidence.
"We retrieved data [from Ravnsborg's phone] that showed internet usage, email, phone logs and text logs while traveling. Jason Ravnsborg told us his only phone usage was to call his father," Arenz said. "But the pinged data showed email usage and reading websites. We asked him about that and he first maintained that he only made calls, but he later acknowledged he may have checked emails. He was only willing to acknowledge something once he knew we had the information."
In a closing argument, Vargo noted that the testimony proved Ravnsborg had habitually lied to a variety of officials regarding the events leading up to and following the crash.
"The idea that somehow he’s prevented by ND from taking the polygraph is about as honest as the rest of the story he's told you. He lies about where is in the lane. Mr. Butler has several times acknowledged that he knows he wasn't in the lane of traffic," Vargo said, noting he also claimed he was in the lane of traffic in a letter to the House of Representatives. "He didn't just lie to 911, he didn't just lie to law enforcement, he lied to the House the night before they met for impeachment." . . .
. . . Ravnsborg is the first statewide official to be impeached, removed from office and barred from holding a future office in the state.
The Senate's action closes a nearly two-year saga that began with a September 2020 accident, when Ravnsborg was driving a car that struck and killed pedestrian Joe Boever. Questions arose later about Ravnsborg's conduct following the accident, including his statement that he didn't immediately know he hit a person rather than a deer.
State Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, R-Watertown, was among those who voted against Ravnsborg on Tuesday.
"If it was anybody besides the attorney general that did that to your neighbor, your family, your friend, we wouldn't be having this discussion," Schoenbeck said during a speech to his Senate colleagues. "Why this is dragged out, why we're even having this trial, is beyond me. This is only because of the assorted political agendas other folks have. There should have been a resignation a long time ago. There should have been contrition that hasn't happened, and there should be impeachment." . . .
Photo: Attorney General Ravnsborg's Taurus, with which he swerved off a highway and killed Joseph Boever, who was carrying a flashlight as he walked on the shoulder of the road.
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