South Dakota Supreme Court to consider sanctions on disgraced former AG Ravnsborg during Feb. 14 hearing
The South Dakota Supreme Court will determine if former South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg’s law license will be suspended.
It’s the latest legal trouble for the Republican, who was forced from office in 2022, nearly two years after he ran over and killed a man in central South Dakota. Ravnsborg’s actions before and after that Sept. 12, 2020, crash led to this latest possible sanction.
The South Dakota Bar Association has recommended a 26-month suspension, retroactive to June 21, 2022. That’s the date the South Dakota Senate voted to convict him, remove him from office and prohibit him from ever holding public office again.
On May 19, the Disciplinary Board of the State Bar of South Dakota filed findings of fact and a recommendation that he be suspended. On June 16, the state Supreme Court, which oversees disciplinary cases involving lawyers, ordered the appointing of a referee, retired Judge Bradley G. Zell of Sioux Falls, according to State Court Administrator Greg Sattizahn and South Dakota Unified Judicial System Public Information Officer Alisa Bousa.
In November, Zell held a hearing with lawyer Thomas H. Frieberg of Beresford, who represents the State Bar Association Disciplinary Board, and Michael Butler of Rapid City, who represented Ravnsborg during the impeachment trial and is once again acting as his lawyer. Zell submitted findings of fact to the state Supreme Court as well as the two lawyers.
Frieberg’s law firm serves as the counsel for the South Dakota Bar Association Disciplinary Board. He told the Black Hills Pioneer that such hearings are held as needed.
“It’s not frequently, I would say,” Frieberg said. “Every couple years.”
He said the state Supreme Court is the only body with the authority to suspend, disbar or penalize a lawyer.
Frieberg said he and Butler will be given 20 minutes to state their case. After that, it’s up to the justices to determine Ravnsborg’s fate, Frieberg said.
“I don’t know how quickly the Supreme Court will make its decision,” he said.
Butler, a longtime Sioux Falls lawyer who has relocated to Rapid City, did not return an email seeking comment. A listed phone number was disconnected. He was the Democratic candidate for attorney general in 1990, losing to Republican Mark Barnett.
Ravnsborg’s hearing is set for 9 a.m. CST Wednesday, Feb. 14, at the South Dakota Supreme Court Courtroom in the State Capitol Building, 500 E. Capitol Ave. in Pierre. It will be open to the public and will be streamed online via the UJS website. Here is the link to the Supreme Court’s Term of Court webpage:
Attorney generals involved
The State Bar is acting on a complaint filed by Alexis Tracy, the former Clay County state’s attorney who served as a prosecutor in the Senate impeachment trial. Tracy is now an assistant attorney general in Attorney General Marty Jackley’s office.
Jackley, a Republican, was elected to a fourth term in 2022. He previously served as attorney general from 2009-19. Ravnsborg, also a Republican, was elected in 2018, defeating Democratic candidate Randy Seiler, a former U.S. attorney.
The complaint filed by Tracy said Ravnsborg violated Rule 8.4(d) of the Rules of Professional Conduct for South Dakota lawyers. “It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to … engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice,” the rules state.
Tracy alleges that Ravnsborg improperly used his office to avoid sanctions when he was stopped for traffic offenses. He has a lengthy record of driving violations.
He also refused to accept responsibility for Boever’s death and the harm it caused the legal community in South Dakota, the filing states.
“Ravnsborg displayed a troubling lack of understanding of his obligations as a lawyer,” it states. “After persistent prompting from the board, he reluctantly agreed that the board was not part of a political conspiracy.”
He also believed the outcry was a reaction to his investigation of people close to Gov. Kristi Noem, a fellow Republican who also was elected to a statewide office in 2018, as well as her conduct in office.
Noem was under scrutiny over alleged special treatment received by her daughter, Kassidy Peters when she sought an upgrade to her appraiser license. Appraiser Certification Program Director Sherry Bren said she was pressured to grant the license to Peters, including a meeting at the Governor’s Residence with Noem and her daughter present, and later forced to retire.
After Bren filed an age-discrimination complaint, she received a $200,000 settlement on the condition she not disparage state officials.
Noem was also close to billionaire philanthropist T. Denny Sanford, who was under investigation for possession of child pornography. Jackley was Sanford’s lawyer. No charges have been filed against Sanford, and the investigation in South Dakota was closed.
“Ravnsborg considered the investigation of his conduct related to the killing of Joe Boever to be a political matter aimed to remove him from office because he considered himself to be a reformer, or outsider, who administered his office without influence from politicians protecting powerful people who were engaging in criminal conduct,” Frieberg wrote.
Instead of expressing regret for the fatal crash, Ravnsborg appeared more interested in his political future — he did not announce that he would not seek a second term until June 2022 — as well as his military career, the filing states.
Ravnsborg is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves. He announced on Facebook that he was being promoted and changed his profile picture to that rank’s insignia. But the Army Reserve placed his promotion on hold in May 2021.
An email to Lt. Col. Simon B. Flake, an Army Reserve spokesman, was not returned.
Joe Boever’s death
This hearing is the latest step in the legal process since Ravnsborg ran over and killed a Highmore man.
Ravnsborg, who was returning to Pierre from a Republican event in Redfield, struck and killed Joe Boever, 55, around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, 2020, as Boever walked along the shoulder of U.S. Highway 14 just west of Highmore.
Ravnsborg called 911, identifying himself as the attorney general. Hyde County Sheriff Mike Volek, who lived nearby, responded.
Ravnsborg told Volek he did not know what he had struck, although an investigation determined Boever’s face came through the windshield of his red 2011 Ford Taurus and his reading glasses landed inside the vehicle. Boever’s right leg was severed below the knee as he smashed against the car and he suffered considerable trauma to his face and body.
He was killed almost instantly and his body landed on the edge of the north ditch.
Ravnsborg stopped and, he said, walked around the scene of the crash. He told investigators he did not see Boever’s body and thought he had struck a large animal, possibly a deer. The Taurus was severely damaged and a tow truck was called to take it to Pierre.
Sheriff Volek, who said he did not see the body either, loaned Ravnsborg his personal car and the attorney general drove it back to Pierre. He returned the car the morning of Sept. 13, driving in tandem with his chief of staff Tim Bormann.
After filling the sheriff’s car up with gas, they checked the crash site and that was when he spotted Boever’s body, Ravnsborg said.
“As I walked along the shoulder of the road I discovered the body of Mr. Boever in the grass just off the roadway,” he wrote in a release issued days after the fatal crash. “My chief of staff and I checked and it was apparent that Mr. Boever was deceased. I immediately drove to Sheriff Volek’s home to report the discovery and he accompanied me back to the scene.”
But North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Agents Arnie Rumel and Joe Arenz, who interviewed Ravnsborg twice in the weeks following the fatal crash, said Ravnsborg knew he had struck a person. They believe he saw Boever’s body on the side of the road immediately after the crash.
“He walked by a flashlight that’s on,” Rummel said during testimony before a legislative committee in January 2022. “There’s a body that’s laying within 2 feet of the roadway and obviously deceased and he’s all white, there isn’t any blood being pumped in him, and white is reflective, I believe that he’d have to see him.”
The agents, who investigated the case to avoid a conflict of interest with the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation and the attorney general, said the fact that Boever’s face came through the windshield and his glasses were found on the floorboard of the car made Ravnsborg’s story impossible to believe.
Ravnsborg denied seeing Boever’s face, the glasses or a flashlight that Boever was carrying at the time of his death. The flashlight was still on when investigators found it the day after the crash.
The agents said it had been illuminated “like a beacon” on a “pitch black” night when the crash occurred.
“I did not see a flashlight,” Ravnsborg responded. “I did not know it was a man until the next day.”
His story was met with widespread disbelief. Gov. Kristi Noem called for him to resign and when he did not, urged the Legislature to impeach him. A governor does not have the authority to suspend or remove an attorney general, since that is an elected position.
Hearings were launched in 2021 but after Noem released two videos of Ravnsborg being interviewed by the North Dakota investigators, the Legislature halted them and said it would wait for his legal case to be completed.
On Aug. 26, 2021, as part of a plea deal, Ravnsborg pleaded no contest to making an illegal lane change and using a phone while driving. A reckless driving count dismissed. He paid a pair of $500 fines plus $3,000 in court costs.
Retired Circuit Court Judge John Brown, who heard the case after all other judges recused themselves, also ordered Ravnsborg to perform public service on distracted driving education.
Nick Nemec (seen above, left, at the crash site in a Tom Lawrence photo), a Holabird farmer and Boever’s cousin, said Ravnsborg’s lawyer objected to the community service portion of the sentence based on a previous South Dakota Supreme Court ruling.
“Judge Brown took the objection under advisement and later dropped that portion of the sentence,” Nemec said. “Ravensburg did no community service, which had been a request made by the family at the sentencing — PSAs made annually near the anniversary of Joe’s death.”
He said he also wants to correct a claim Ravnsborg made in a letter to members of the House just before the impeachment vote, stating he had offered his condolences to the family.
“This widely reported statement was a bold-faced lie,” Nemec said. “If he did in fact offer condolences to the family, we have yet to learn which family members they were offered to. It wasn’t Joe’s widow and it wasn’t Joe’s mother. In short, he was lying about his actions even at the time of impeachment.”
Ravnsborg never appeared in a courtroom during the legal process. He settled a civil lawsuit with Boever’s widow for an undisclosed sum.
Ravnsborg issued a statement, saying he was “very sorry Joe Boever lost his life in this accident. I am sorry to the entire family for the loss of their loved one.”
He said he had “fully cooperated” with the investigation but declined to speak to reporters. Ravnsborg said he wished he had met Boever “under different circumstances.”
Talk about an understatement!
Impeachment
In 2022, the question of impeachment was once again posed in Pierre. After a month of hearings, a special House committee voted 6-2 on March 28, 2022, against recommending impeachment. All six Republicans voted against it, while the two Democrats on the panel wanted impeachment hearings held.
Gov. Noem assailed that decision.
“Jason Ravnsborg killed a man, lied to investigators about the events of that night, and attempted to cover it up,” she said in a tweet after the House committee adjourned without recommending impeachment. “Joseph Boever’s family deserves justice.”
On April 12, 2022, after an emotional day of speeches on the House floor, the full body voted 36-31 to impeach Ravnsborg and send the matter to the South Dakota Senate for a trial.
The impeachment trial was the first in state history. It was filled with drama. State Sen. Lee Schoenbeck of Watertown, the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, said Ravnsborg had not told the truth when he said he didn’t know what he hit with his car.
“There’s no question that was a lie,” Schoenbeck said on June 21, 2022. “This person ran down an innocent South Dakotan.”
He also criticized Ravnsborg for declining to testify during the trial. The attorney general sat quietly during the trial, displaying no emotion.
“There’s a mic right there, and that’s a damn short walk,” Schoenbeck said.
The prosecutors in the Senate trial echoed Schoenbeck’s statement.
“He absolutely saw the man that he struck in the moments after,” Tracy said.
“We’ve heard better lies from 5-year-olds,” Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark Vargo.
Ravnsborg was convicted of crimes related to Boever’s death on a 24-9 vote. The Senate convicted him of malfeasance in office on a 31-2 count. It then voted 33-0 to ban him from ever holding public office in the state based on both convictions.
Vargo was named by Gov. Noem to serve as interim attorney general after Ravnsborg was convicted. Noem said his removal had lifted “a dark cloud” that had been lingering over the office.
Ravnsborg, who has continued to live in Pierre, earned a law degree from the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law in 2001 and was admitted to the state bar that year. He clerked for a judge in Minnesota until 2003, when he began work at a private law firm in Yankton.
He is licensed to practice law in South Dakota and Iowa, as well as the federal district courts for South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the Federal Court of Claims, and the United States Supreme Court.
According to the State Bar Association, Ravnsborg, 47, has not practiced law since he was removed from office, but he has plans to do so in an undisclosed location, with the option of returning to practice in South Dakota.
If he is suspended, the state Supreme Court could allow him to work as a legal assistant under conditions of employment and supervision established by the court, according to the State Bar’s May 19 filing with the Supreme Court.
Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.
