Jason Ravnsborg's 2020 crash, impeachment revisited in multi-episode podcast series

South Dakota Public Broadcasting's Lee Strubinger launching 'A Short Walk' this week

(SDPB)

The three-year saga that started with Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg’s fatal accident outside Highmore and ended with his removal from office altered South Dakota history.

Starting Tuesday, the oral history of the events that surrounded the death of Joe Boever and the aftermath that unfolded will be available in podcast form.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s Lee Strubinger has produced a nine-part series about the fateful crash in Hyde County and the events that followed in a podcast called “A Short Walk.”

Strubinger, a veteran state House reporter who's covered Ravnsborg since he first took office in 2017, said the podcast series gives a full account of the story that’s now largely in the rearview mirror.

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“This is the first time the state has ever gone through this whole impeachment process for a constitutional officer,” Strubinger told The Dakota Scout, adding that other hot-button issues at the time spread news coverage thinner than what its historical weight would have normally deserved. “(And) this really all came around the same time that we were dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and federal funding for that… Those were really busy sessions even without all of this.”

Ravnsborg struck and killed Boever, 55, on Sept. 12, 2020.

While the incident resulted in the state’s top prosecutor being charged with misdemeanors — to which Ravnsborg eventually pleaded no contest to — the Yankton native became the target of Gov. Kristi Noem and her allies in the South Dakota Legislature.

And more so than his criminal trial, efforts to remove Ravnsborg via impeachment brought with it the type of political theater South Dakota had never before seen.

The House of Representatives in March 2022 voted to impeach Ravnsborg with a single-vote margin, before an impeachment trial in the Senate convicted him with an equally narrow vote.

“A Short Walk” takes listeners through the events that unfolded, mostly following chronological order. Strubinger said it relies on reporting done by himself and others, including reporters now working for The Dakota Scout.

“There is a lot more to it than what we were all able to deliver during that busy time,” he said. “It just kind of became another story amongst the noise. I wanted to take a step back and tell as full an account of everything as I could.” 

In particular, the longtime newsman says he honed in on the life and story of Boever, an element often lost in the politics surrounding Ravnsborg’s removal from office in spring 2022.

“I wanted to get a sense of who he was, and where he was living at the time, what he enjoyed doing,” Strubinger said.

All episodes from “A Short Walk” will be released Tuesday, and can be heard anywhere that podcasts are streamed.

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