South Dakota impeached, AG removed from crash account

by Stephen Groves | The Associated Press

PIERRE, SD – The South Dakota Senate on Tuesday convicted Attorney General Jason Ravensborg of two impeachment charges stemming from a fatal 2020 crash, removing and barring him from future office in a stinging rebuke that showed that most senators did not believe his account of the accident. ,

Ravensborg, a first-term Republican who recently announced he would not seek re-election, showed little emotion as senators pleaded guilty to a crime that killed someone before. He then delivered another guilty verdict on a misdemeanor charge alleging that he misled investigators and abused his office.

Ravensborg told a 911 dispatcher on the night of the accident that she may have hit a deer or other large animal, and has said she didn’t know it hit a man – 55-year-old Joseph Bower – until he was back at the scene. didn `t come. Next morning. Criminal investigators said they did not believe some of Ravensborg’s statements, and several senators clarified that they did not either.

“There’s no question that was a lie,” said Sen. Lee Schonbeck, the chamber’s top-ranking Republican. “This man shot down an innocent South Dakoton.”

Schönbeck also criticized Ravensborg for refusing to testify in his own defense, saying that Ravensborg should have shared “what he was doing” on the night of the accident.

“There’s a mic in there, and it’s too short to walk,” Schonbeck said.

The convicts needed a two-thirds majority. Senators gathered a minimum of 24 votes to convict Ravensborg on the first charge, with some senators saying the two misdemeanors he pleaded guilty to were not crimes serious enough to warrant impeachment. The allegations of corruption – Ravensborg also asked investigators what data could be found on his cellphones, among other things – went off with 31 votes.

The votes to bar Ravensborg from future office, taken in both cases, were unanimous.

Ravensborg’s face showed little expression throughout the vote, keeping a hand over his mouth as he did for much testing, then writing on a notepad on his lap. He did not answer questions from reporters as he left the Capitol.

Ravensborg agreed to an undisclosed settlement with Bower’s widow in September.

Bower’s cousin Nick Nemec, who has been a frequent advocate for a harsher sentence for Ravensborg, said the votes were “retaliatory”.

“It’s just a relief. It’s been almost two years that the drug is on it and it feels like a load off my shoulders,” he said.

Ravensborg is the first officer in South Dakota history to be impeached and convicted.

Governor Kristi Noem, who would elect Ravensborg’s replacement until a candidate was chosen to replace her in November, asked Ravensborg to resign soon after the crash and later pressured lawmakers to pursue impeachment. As the saga progressed, Noam publicly supported the election of Ravensborg’s predecessor, Republican Marty Jackley, as his replacement. Noem did not immediately comment on the Senate result.

Ravensborg has argued that the governor, who has positioned himself for a potential 2024 White House bid, pushed for his removal as he investigated ethics complaints against Noam.

As the impeachment trial began on Tuesday, prosecutors answered a question that hangs over developments in the aftermath of the September 2020 crash: Did Ravensborg know she killed a man on the night of the crash?

“She absolutely saw the man she killed moments later,” said Alexis Tracy, a Clay County state attorney who led the prosecution.

Prosecutors also told senators that Ravensborg used his title to “set the tone and gain influence” after the accident, even as he alleged “misrepresentations and outright statements” to accident investigators. lie” was also given. Prosecutors played a montage of audio clips of Ravensborg referring to himself as the Attorney General.

Prosecutors investigated Ravensborg’s alleged false statements during the aftermath of the accident, including that he never exceeded the speed limit, that he reached out to Bower’s family to offer his condolences. and that he was not browsing his phone during his drive home. ,

Prosecutors played a series of video clips during their closing arguments that showed Ravensborg’s transfer account of her phone use during interviews with criminal investigators. The attorney general at first completely denied that he was using his phone while driving, but then admitted that he was looking at his phone minutes before the accident. When it came time for the senators to speak, many noted a crash reconstruction that found Ravensborg’s car had completely driven out of its street, contrary to their initial statement that it was in the middle of the road at the time of impact. Were.

Ravensborg settled the criminal case last year by pleading no competition to a pair of traffic misdemeanors, including making an illegal lane change and using a phone while driving, and was fined by a judge.

The attorney general’s defense asked senators to consider the effects of impeachment on state government work. Ross Garber, a legal analyst and law professor at Tulane University specializing in impeachment proceedings, told senators that impeachment would “undo the will of the voters.”

Ravensborg was on her way home from a political fundraiser after dark on a state highway in central South Dakota on September 12, 2020, when her car collided with “something,” according to a transcript of her 911 call. He told the dispatcher that it could be a deer or other animal.

Investigators had slipped into what they thought was Ravensborg’s statements, such as when he said he turned around at the crash site and “saw her” before correcting himself and saying: “I didn’t see him.” And they argued that Bower’s face had come through Ravensborg’s windshield because his glasses were found in the car.

“We’ve heard better lies than 5-year-olds,” Pennington County State Attorney Mark Vargo, acting as impeachment prosecutor, said of Ravensborg’s statement.

Investigators determined that the attorney general had walked right behind Bower’s body and that the torch Bower was carrying – still illuminated the next morning – when he looked around the scene on the night of the accident.

Ravensborg said neither he nor the county sheriff who arrived at the scene knew that Bower’s body was lying on the shoulder of the highway just a few feet from the sidewalk.

“There’s no way you can go without seeing it,” Ernie Rummel, an agent with the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who led the criminal investigation, said in testimony Tuesday.

Prosecutors also picked up an exchange that Ravensborg had three days after the accident with one of its staff members after submitting his phone to accident investigators. Ravensborg questioned an agent with the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation about what would happen during a forensic examination of his cellphone, even though the agency should have had no part in the investigation to avoid a conflict of interest.

“We shouldn’t have gotten involved,” said now-retired agent, Brent Gromer, as he explained why the exchange made him uncomfortable.

Ravensborg’s defense attorney argued that the attorney general had done nothing nefarious. His defense attorney, Mike Butler, described any discrepancies in Ravensborg’s memory of that night as human error, and described accident investigator Rummel’s defamatory testimony as “opinion” that he was in a court of law. Will not done.

During closing arguments, Butler stated that the criminal prosecution had found “no criminal conviction” for Bower’s death and urged senators to refrain from reopening that case.

“No amount of fire and brimstone changes this fact,” he said.