PIERRE, SD (AP) – South Dakota’s Republican Attorney General was charged Thursday with three misdemeanors for assaulting and killing a man with his car last summer, avoiding more serious criminal charges in a case that raised questions about how the state’s top security officer first reported the accident.
Jason Ravnsborg faces up to 30 days in prison and a fine of up to $ 500 on each charge: careless driving, off-road driving and motor vehicle driving while on the phone.
Ravensborg said he was grateful for the legal system to assume his innocence – for the time being – as relatives of the man killed in the collision, 55-year-old Joseph Boever said he was disappointed, but not surprised, that the attorney general faces only misdemeanor charges.
Hyde County Deputy District Attorney Emily Sovell said the evidence simply did not support criminal charges of vehicular homicide or wrongful death, which could mean years in prison. She noted that Ravnsborg was not intoxicated and that a murder charge would have required the state to show that he “knowingly and unjustifiably” ignored a substantial risk.
“At best, his conduct was negligent, which is insufficient to bring criminal charges in South Dakota,” said Beadle County Attorney Michael Moore, who helped deal with the case.
Ravnsborg, who was elected to his first term in 2018, initially told authorities that he thought he had hit a deer or other large animal while driving to Pierre from a Republican fundraiser in late September 12. He said he had searched the unlit area with a cell phone flashlight and did not realize that he had killed a man until the next day when he returned to the crash site on US 14 near Highmore.
Accident investigators said in November that Ravnsborg was distracted when he moved to the shoulder of the highway where Boever was walking. But prosecutors took more months to make a decision on the accusation in the accident, launching an investigation that considered GPS data from cell phones, video images along the Ravnsborg route and DNA evidence.
Ravnsborg said he had not been drinking before the accident and handed over his electronic devices to investigators. A toxicology report from a blood sample collected about 15 hours after the accident showed that there was no alcohol in the Ravnsborg system. Investigators said on Thursday that they found no evidence that he drank alcohol in the hours before the accident.
Boever’s family questioned Ravnsborg’s account and expressed frustration how five months passed while waiting for a recovery decision.
Boever’s cousin Nick Nemec said on Thursday that he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the accusations. He called South Dakota’s manslaughter law “weak” and hoped his family would take civil action against Ravnsborg.
“I feared that the prosecution was close to crossing the white line,” said Nemec. “And that was exactly what the charge was.”
Ravnsborg said in a statement: “I appreciate, more than ever, that the presumption of innocence placed in our legal system continues to work.”
He added that he could not imagine the “pain and loss” of the Boever family.
Moore, the state attorney, said the misdemeanor charges were the “right decision”, but that he did not feel good about it.
“Obviously, when a person dies, we want to know what happened. But we are limited by the investigation and the facts, ”he said. “And we can’t force someone to tell us. I mean, there is nowhere else to go. “
Despite Ravnsborg’s accusation of using his cell phone, he was not using his device at the time of the accident, officials said. They said the phone records showed that he was using the phone about a minute earlier.
Prosecutors determined from cell phone records that Ravnsborg passed Boever’s body as he walked around the scene of the accident with his cell phone’s flashlight. But Sovell noted that it was a “very dark night” with no road lighting and that there was no evidence that Ravnsborg or the sheriff who responded to the accident saw Boever’s body.
A Wyoming accident reconstruction specialist and the North Dakota Criminal Investigation Department assisted the South Dakota Highway Patrol in the investigation. Such accidents would normally be investigated by the South Dakota Criminal Investigation Office, which reports to the attorney general’s office. The other agencies took over the investigation to avoid a conflict of interest.
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This story has been corrected to rule out an erroneous mention that Ravnsborg could face up to a year in prison; the prosecutor said that each of the three misdemeanors is punishable by up to 30 days in prison and a fine.