The South Dakota Senate voted 24-9 to confirm count 1 against Ravensburg, paying the two-thirds majority required to be convicted and removed from office. He was also convicted in the second count, 31-2, and two 33-0 votes barred him from holding office again. 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 making significant revelations in the trial, prosecutors criticized Ravnsborg as a liar who spoke out about what happened on the night of the fatal accident – and again in the following months. “We have heard better lies from 5-year-olds,” said prosecutor Mark Vargo. Perhaps the only bomb in the trial was the speculation offered by North Dakota Bureau of Investigation agent Arnie Rummel that Ravnsborg may have thought of leaving the scene where he killed Joe Boever on the U.S. Highway on September 14, 2020. Rummel and Agent Joe Arenz were summoned to investigate the fatal accident, as the South Dakota Criminal Investigation Department reports to the Attorney General. Rummel said Tuesday that Ravnsborg did not immediately stop his vehicle after hitting Boever, instead rolling for seven seconds or 613 feet. the agent suggested he could have stopped at about 175 feet. When Ravnsborg called 911 shortly after the crash, the then attorney general said he was not sure who or what he hit and agreed with a sender who suggested he may have been a deer. But when Rummel testified before a special legislature earlier this year, he said he was convinced Ravnsborg saw Boever’s body immediately. “He walked by a flashlight that was on,” he said. “There is a corpse that is two feet away from the road and obviously he is dead and he is all white, there is no blood pumping inside him and the fact [is] “White is reflective, I think she should see it.” Senate Democratic Leader Troy Heinert, speaking shortly before the vote, said he believed Ravnsborg knew he had beaten and killed one person. “He knew,” Heinert said. “He knew something terrible had happened and he had to answer for it and he panicked.” Vargo, in his last speech, told the senators that it was their duty to convict the attorney general. “By deed and word, Jason Ravnsborg has lost his right to be the attorney general of this great state,” he said. The defense did not present any witnesses, instead refuting the investigators’ allegations and questioning the power of the state Senate to remove the attorney general from his duties. Ravnsborg was present but did not testify. “We choose not to call him as a witness,” said Mike Butler of Sioux Falls. “I will not go further than that.” In his closing remarks, Butler questioned whether Ravnsborg could be removed for driving offense, as he was not directly linked to his role as attorney general. “It must be a serious offense,” he said. “The Senate should not be limited to the role of traffic warden.” Governor Kristi Noem — who is under investigation by Ravnsborg’s office for using state-owned aircraft and participating in her daughter’s efforts to obtain a real estate appraiser license — will nominate a replacement to complete the last six months of Ravnsborg’s term . He has made it clear for a long time that he felt that Ravnsborg had to resign, while the controversy often becomes extremely personal. “After almost two years, the dark cloud over the Attorney General’s office has lifted,” the governor wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. “It’s time to move on and start rebuilding trust in the office.” Noem, who is running for a second term, did not attend the trial, but certainly watched closely as her offices are in the same building. He did not immediately announce who he would name as interim attorney general. Former Attorney General Marty Jackley, who ran against Noem for the Republican nomination as governor in 2018, is now looking for his old job back and he and Noem have backed each other. Ravnsborg killed Bover on his way to Pierre, the state capital, on September 12, 2020, after attending a Republican rally. Boever was killed almost immediately after being hit, and his right leg was amputated when he was hit by the attorney general’s private car. His body climbed on top of him, his face passing through the windshield and his broken glasses landing inside the vehicle. The ousted attorney general has repeatedly stated that he did not see the man’s face in inches from his own and had no idea what he had hit. County Sheriff Hyde Mike Volek, who lived nearby, answered a 911 call from Ravensburg. He gave Ravnsborg a car to drive and the attorney general turned to Pierre. The next day, Ravnsborg returned to Highmore to leave the car and, as he said, discovered Boever’s body. Ravnsborg, whose long history of driving offenses was revealed after the fatal accident, was eventually charged with three offenses: illegal lane change, telephone use while driving and charging for careless driving. No one was directly involved in the beating and assassination of Boever. Almost a year after the fatal accident, he struck a complaint agreement, citing not disputing the illegal lane change and using his cell phone while driving. The charge of careless driving was rejected. He never appeared in court. Instead, he was fined $ 1,000, fined $ 3,742 for 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 referral. But on April 4, the South Dakota Department of Public Safety issued a report on the accident, and two days later, a pair of highway patrols provided lawmakers with a condemnatory briefing. New details have stepped up pressure on Republican lawmakers to prosecute their own. The night before Parliament voted on the referral, Ravnsborg published a letter he sent to lawmakers, as well as a document in which he asked questions about the case and offered his opinion on them. He accused Noem of pressuring him to resign, saying he felt compelled to remain in place to investigate her conduct as governor. Noem responded to Ravnsborg’s allegations on Twitter. “The Attorney General wants to do this for me to divert the attention of members of Parliament, when the question before them is whether he should be the highest law enforcement officer of the state. “He killed an innocent man, lied about the events of that night and abused his power to cover it up.” The vote on his ouster was very close, as the House of Representatives acted to refer Ravnsborg, a Republican for a first term, by a 36-31-3 vote. The referral required a majority of votes in the 70-member body and 36 were the minimum. All eight Democrats voted in favor of the referral, while 28 of the 62 Republicans joined them. Three did not vote. Ravnsborg has reached an out-of-court settlement with Jenny Boever, the widow of the man he killed. He says he apologized to the family, but Jenny Boever and Nick Nemec, Joe Boever’s cousin, said they had not heard of it. He was present at the trial on Tuesday, as were other family members and some government officials. Nemec, a former Democratic lawmaker, told the Daily Beast that Jenny Boever cried when the Senate voted in Ravnsborg’s favor. She left with one of the lawyers who represented her in the civil lawsuit and did not comment to reporters. Nemec said he had a different feeling. He was not sure how the vote would turn out. “I was just relieved,” he said. “I was afraid to try to make a prediction.” Nemec, who has been to every court and legislative hearing, has previously said he was unhappy with how things turned out. “A lot of people across the state have told me that there are two justice systems, one for the average Joes like Joe Boever, one for the big people,” he told the Daily Beast in April. “If there was a unified justice system, Ravnsborg would be in jail.”
