If you have a couple spare hours, you might find the above video as engrossing as I did. Last September, Jason Ravnsborg, South Dakota's attorney general, attended a Republican party event at the town of Redfield. He was driving back to his home in Pierre, 100 miles to the west, when shortly before 10:30 p.m. his car struck and killed a man walking on the shoulder of the state highway about a mile west of the town of Highmore. Ravnsborg called 9-1-1 and the local sheriff was dispatched. The sheriff appears not to have exhibited much curiosity. He believed Ravnsborg’s story about having hit something, "probably a deer," and gave him his own car to finish his drive to Pierre. Next morning, Ravnsborg "discovered" the dead body while returning the car to the sheriff.
Since Ravnsborg is the attorney general of South Dakota, North Dakota officials assisted with the investigation. The video is the North Dakota guys' second interview with Ravnsborg, after they'd been able to determine that his story about what had happened was a tissue of lies. He'd actually been reading on his phone conservative news sites while speeding along the highway, and he killed the pedestrian when his car veered onto the shoulder. A reconstruction of the accident and certain items of evidence, preeminently the fact that the victim's eyeglasses were found inside Ravnsborg’s car, make it pretty hard to believe he thought he'd hit a deer.
I feel like if it had been me instead of the South Dakota attorney general, the interview would have ended with a recitation of my Miranda rights. Maybe not: I guess in South Dakota impairment, like from alcohol, is a necessary element of criminal vehicular homicide, and Ravnsborg was only distracted and careless (also illegal, of course). It's a crime to lie to the FBI but these guys are only the Dogberry of North Dakota. Perhaps for that reason, I keep thinking of the movie Fargo: the North Dakota investigators, especially the one sitting across from Ravnsborg, have Marge Gunderson's accents and display also her brand of low-key job proficiency. Before it's over, the state attorney general resembles poor hapless Jerry Lundegaard.
Friends, especially if you did it, do not talk to the cops without a lawyer, even if you are a lawyer yourself and have a dim view of the intelligence of law enforcement officials. It's their line of work and there's probably stuff you don't understand. One of the interview's poignant moments occurs when it's revealed that after Ravnsborg had turned over his phones, but before this interview, he had questioned some of his own employees about what might be revealed from a forensic examination of a cell phone. The answer is: enough so that the cops will figure out what article from what right-wing news site you were reading when you ran a guy over, killing him.
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