South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg killed a man in September and drove away. He later told law enforcement that he thought he had hit a deer on his way home from an alcohol-fueled event (he says he wasn’t drinking!). Last week, prosecutors announced that they were only pursuing misdemeanor charges against the state’s top cop because accountability does not exist in this dojo. It was already shocking that the state attorney general was going to skate on a hit and run, but evidence released today makes it utterly insane that any prosecutor would shy away from this case.
Days after South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg fatally struck a man while driving in September, detectives told the Republican official they had found a pair of broken reading glasses inside his Ford Taurus. They belonged to the man he killed.
That was a problem, detectives said, because Ravnsborg, 44, said he didn’t know he had hit a man until the following day, when he returned to the scene and found the body of Joseph Boever, 55, in a ditch.
“They’re Joe’s glasses, so that means his face came through your windshield,” one of the detectives said in an interview released by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety on Tuesday.
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Putting aside the possibility of involuntary manslaughter charges, a government lawyer armed with the knowledge that the victim clearly went through Ravnsborg’s windshield while the AG maintained that he had no idea what had happened still thought, “I don’t see a case to be made for ‘leaving the scene of accident’ or ‘lying to authorities.'” Those are misdemeanors too, but certainly seem ripe for putting in front of a jury. And no one is interested in pulling the thread on whether or not his denials about drinking at the event stand up to scrutiny after the rest of his story has strained credulity?
The restraint that prosecutors can exercise when they’re trying to protect their own never ceases to amaze.
Earlier: State Attorney General Told Officers He’d Hit A Deer… In Reality, A Man Is Now Dead
State AG Killed A Man And Told Cops He’d Hit A Deer, Will Only Face Misdemeanor Charges
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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.