PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — The South Dakota Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday to suspend the law license of former state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg after a deadly 2020 crash was the right thing to do, according to a relative of the victim.
Nick Nemec was a cousin of Joe Boever, who died at the scene on the west edge of Highmore after he was struck and killed by the car Ravnsborg was driving. Nemec, a former legislator who farms near Highmore, attended many of the Legislature’s meetings leading up to the South Dakota Senate’s 2022 decision that Ravnsborg must be removed from office.
Nemec described the six-month suspension handed down by the Supreme Court against Ravnsborg as “scant” but “deserved.”
“It wouldn’t break my heart if he lost his law license for good,” Nemec said when contacted by KELOLAND News. “My passions are a little hotter than the Supreme Court.”
The Supreme Court said Ravnsborg violated three rules of conduct for lawyers, including telling law enforcement officers that he was the attorney general when they stopped him for speeding in the months before the crash. Ravnsborg also told the emergency dispatcher that he was the attorney general when he called 911 after the crash to report he had hit something.
Nemec, who had served in the U.S. Marines, said he was happy to hear that the justices called out that particular behavior of Ravnsborg, who is an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves. “I immediately thought of some higher ranking officer pulling rank on some junior, a subordinate, on trying to get out of something, and it irritated me,” Nemec said.
Republican Senator Lee Schoenbeck led the drive in the Senate to permanently ban Ravnsborg from any South Dakota office.
“I think the Supreme Court was fair in their assessment, no passion or prejudice,” Schoenbeck responded in a text to KELOLAND News on Thursday.
Republican Rep. Will Mortenson brought the impeachment articles against Ravnsborg in the state House of Representatives.
“The Court affirmed what many of us in the Legislature believed: Mr. Ravnsborg didn’t live up to the standard South Dakota deserves,” Mortenson replied in an email to KELOLAND News.
Schoenbeck and Mortenson, who are attorneys, were two of the participants who later wrote articles about the impeachment and conviction process that were published in a special edition of South Dakota Law Review.
According to the edition’s introductory essay, Ravnsborg and his attorney were invited to contribute their perspectives but they declined.
