He was also satisfied with Ravnsborg’s punishment and the crash investigation. “Basically just take your shirt off and say, ‘Here I am, bring it on.’ I’ll answer anything you’ve got, and that’s what this guy did,” Rensch said.īeadle County State’s Attorney Michael Moore, one of the prosecutors, agreed that the attorney general had been cooperative. Rensch told reporters after the hearing that Ravnsborg had cooperated fully with investigators by sitting down for two interviews and allowing his phones to be analyzed. And he noted that the case was “not a homicide case, and it’s not a manslaughter case.” Rensch pushed back hard on the family’s criticism, calling the attorney general an “honorable man.” Rensch said Ravsnborg had been consistent from the beginning that he simply did not see Boever. “This is inexcusable.”īoever’s widow, Jennifer Boever, said Ravnsborg’s “actions are incomprehensible and … cannot be forgiven.” “Our brother lay in the ditch for 12 hours,” she said. South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg pleaded no contest Thursday to a pair of misdemeanor traffic charges over a crash last year that killed Boever, avoiding jail time despite bitter complaints from the victim’s family that he was being too lightly punished for actions they called “inexcusable.” (AP Photo/Stephen Groves) Jane Boever holds a photo of her brother Joseph Boever's tombstone outside the courthouse in Fort Pierre, South Dakota, on Thursday, Aug. Prosecutors dropped a careless driving charge. Ravnsborg pleaded no contest to making an illegal lane change and using a phone while driving, which each carried a maximum sentence of up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine. He said he didn’t realize he struck a man until he returned to the crash scene the next day and discovered the body of Boever. In a 911 call after the crash, Ravnsborg was initially unsure about what he hit and told a dispatcher it might have been a deer. 12 when he struck Boever, who was walking on the side of a highway. The attorney general was driving home from a political fundraiser on Sept. Lawmakers indicated then that they might resume after the criminal case ended. Impeachment proceedings halted in February after the judge barred state officials from divulging details of the investigation. Noem, in a statement afterward, pushed the state legislature to consider impeachment and said she ordered the House speaker be given a copy of the investigative file. Ravnsborg’s statement accused “partisan opportunists” of exploiting the situation and said they had “manufactured rumors, conspiracy theories and made statements in direct contradiction to the evidence all sides agreed upon.”
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