The attorney general of South Dakota who has been charged in connection with a fatal car crash is facing impeachment.
Jason Ravnsborg, 44, was charged with three misdemeanors on Feb. 18, including careless driving, unsafely driving outside a lane, and using his phone while driving, although he wasn’t using it at the time he allegedly struck and killed Joseph Boever, 55, on Sept. 12, 2020. All three charges are class two misdemeanors and are punishable by up to 30 days in prison.
Gov. Kristi Noem called on Ravnsborg to resign on Tuesday, tweeting, “Now that the investigation has closed and charges have been filed, I believe the Attorney General should resign. I have reviewed the material we are releasing, starting today, and I encourage others to review it as well.”
A bipartisan group of state legislators introduced a resolution to remove Ravnsborg from office on Tuesday. One article of impeachment was for allegedly causing the death of Boever, and the second was for his actions afterward, which lawmakers called “unbecoming” and said “failed to meet the standard of” his office.
911 CALL RELEASED FROM FATAL CRASH INVOLVING SOUTH DAKOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL
Ravnsborg does not plan to go down without a fight.
“At no time has this issue impeded his ability to do the work of the office,” Mike Deaver, his private spokesman, said in a statement. “Instead, he has handled some of the largest settlements and legislative issues the state has ever been through.”
The South Dakota Department of Public Safety released an interview it conducted with Ravnsborg days after the accident occurred.
In the footage, detectives told the attorney general that Boever’s broken glasses were found in his car and that such a discovery challenges his previous statements to police that he was unaware he hit a person until the next day when he found Boever’s body.
“They’re Joe’s glasses, so that means his face came through your windshield,” one of the detectives said.
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“I looked around the vehicle in the dark and saw nothing to indicate what I had hit,” Ravnsborg said in a statement on Sep. 14, two days after the crash. “All I could see were pieces of my vehicle laying on and around the roadway. Because it was dark and I didn’t have a flashlight, I used my cellphone flashlight to survey the ditch but couldn’t see anything.”
