PIERRE, SD (AP) – The South Dakota Senate on Tuesday convicted Attorney General Jason Ravensborg of two impeachment charges stemming from a fatal incident in 2020, removing him and banning him from a future post in a scathing rebuke that showed most senators do not believe in his account of the disaster.
Ravensborg, a first-term Republican who only recently announced he would not run for re-election, showed little emotion when senators first convicted him of committing a crime that caused his death. They then handed down another conviction on charges of abuse, alleging that he had misled investigators and abused his office.
Ravnsborg told a 911 dispatcher on the night of the crash that he may have hit a deer or other large animal, and said he did not know he had hit a man – 55-year-old Joseph Bower – until he returned to the scene. . the next morning. Detectives said they did not believe some of Ravensborg’s statements, and several senators indicated they did not.
“There is no doubt that this is a lie,” said Sen. Lee Schonbeck, the highest-ranking Republican in the House. “This man ran over an innocent South Dakota.”
Schönbeck also criticized Ravnsborg for refusing to testify in his own defense, saying Ravnsborg should have shared “what the hell he was doing” on the night of the crash.
“There’s a microphone there and it’s a damn short walk,” Schönbeck said.
The sentences required a two-thirds majority. Senators garnered at least 24 votes to convict Ravnsborg on the first charge, with some senators saying the two crimes he pleaded not guilty to were not serious enough to impeach. The allegation of abuse – Ravnsborg also asked investigators what data could be found on his mobile phone, among other things – passed by 31 votes.
The votes to ban Ravnsborg from a future post, taken on both points, were unanimous.
Ravensborg’s face showed little emotion during the vote, holding his hand over his mouth, as he did for most of the process, then writing in a notebook on his lap. He did not answer reporters’ questions as he left the Capitol.
Ravensborg agreed in September to an undisclosed agreement with Bower’s widow.
Nick Nemek, Bower’s cousin, who has been a staunch advocate for the severe punishment for Ravensborg, said the votes were an “excuse”.
“It’s just a relief. “It’s been almost two years of drugs and I just feel like a burden on my shoulders,” he said.
Ravensborg was the first employee to be impeached and convicted in South Dakota history.
Gov. Christie Noem, who will elect Ravnsborg’s deputy until a candidate elected to replace him in November, swore in Ravnsborg’s resignation shortly after the crash and later pressured lawmakers to continue impeachment. Noem also publicly backed Ravnsborg’s predecessor, Republican Marty Jackley, for his election.
Ravnsborg claims that the governor, who has positioned herself for a possible candidacy for the White House in 2024, is pushing for his removal in part because he is investigating ethical complaints against Noah.
When the impeachment trial began on Tuesday, prosecutors addressed a question that hung over developments after the September 2020 disaster: Did Ravensborg know he killed a man on the night of the crash?
“He absolutely saw the man he hit in the moments after,” said Alexis Tracy, Clay County Attorney General, who led the prosecution.
Prosecutors also told senators that Ravnsborg used his title “to set the tone and gain influence” after the crash, even when he allegedly made “false allegations and outright lies” to crash investigators. The prosecutor’s office released an editing of audio clips of Ravnsborg, who calls himself chief prosecutor.
Prosecution attorneys investigated Ravensborg’s alleged misstatements during the crash, including that he never drove excessively fast, that he turned to the Bower family to express his condolences, and that he did not look at his phone. while driving home.
Prosecutors released a series of videos during their closing remarks, which showed Ravnsborg’s volatile account of his phone use during interviews with detectives. The attorney general initially denied using his phone while driving, but later admitted that he looked at his phone minutes before the crash.
Ravnsborg resolved the criminal case last year, disputing a couple of road violations, including illegal lane change and phone use while driving, and was fined by a judge.
The defense of the Attorney General focuses his arguments on the consequences of impeachment, asking lawmakers to consider the consequences of their decision on the function of government. Ross Garber, a legal analyst and law professor at Tulane University who specializes in impeachment proceedings, told senators that impeachment would mean “revoking the will of the electorate.”
Ravensborg was returning home from a political fundraising campaign after dark on September 12, 2020, on a state highway in central South Dakota, when his car crashed into “something,” according to a transcript of his 911 call. He later said it could be a deer or another animal.
Investigators identified what they considered to be omissions in Ravnsborg’s statements, such as when he said he turned to the scene and “saw” him before he quickly corrected himself and said, “I didn’t see him.” And they claimed that Bower’s face came out through the windshield of Ravnsborg because his glasses were found in the car.
“We have heard better lies than 5-year-olds,” Pennington County Attorney Mark Vargo, acting impeachment prosecutor, told Ravnsborg in a statement.
Investigators found that the Attorney General passed right over Bower’s body and the flashlight Bower was carrying – still lit the next morning – as he inspected the scene the night of the crash.
Ravensborg said neither he nor the county sheriff who came to the scene knew that Bower’s body lay just steps from the sidewalk on the edge of the highway.
“There’s no way you can go without seeing this,” Arnie Rummel, an agent with the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation who led the criminal investigation, said in testimony Tuesday.
Rummel added that Ravnsborg had hardly behaved like someone who had hit a deer, a common occurrence on South Dakota highways.
Prosecutors also raised an exchange that Ravnsborg had with one of his employees three days after the crash, after handing over his phones to the crash investigators. Ravnsborg questioned an agent from the South Dakota Criminal Investigation Department about what would happen during the forensic examinations of his cell phones, although the agency did not have to participate in the investigation to avoid a conflict of interest.
“We shouldn’t have participated,” said retired agent Brent Gromer, describing why the exchange made him uncomfortable.
Defender of Ravnsborg claims that the Attorney General did nothing wrong and instead fully cooperated in the investigation of the crash. His lawyer, Mike Butler, described all the discrepancies in Ravensborg’s memory of that night as human error.
Butler ignored the testimony of Rummel, who was investigating the crash, as an “opinion” he would not stand up to in court.
Ravnsborg was ready to take a polygraph test, although forensic scientists found it would not be effective to verify the authenticity of the Attorney General.
In his closing remarks, Butler said the prosecution had not established “criminal guilt” for Bower’s death and called on senators to refrain from reviewing the case.
“Neither the amount of fire and brimstone change that fact,” he said.
Senator Arthur Rush, a retired judge who said he met Ravensborg when he was a young lawyer practicing in Rush’s court, was among senators who did not support impeachment on the first charge but did so on the second. He said he was concerned about Ravnsborg’s actions in questioning agents from the Criminal Investigation Department on aspects of the case and issuing a press release on the Attorney General’s office supplies.
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