Immunity Denied: Prosecutor Must Face Suit for Retaliatory Charges After Forfeiture Challenge

DETROIT—Today, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that a Wayne County prosecutor must face Robert Reeves’s lawsuit alleging he twice dragged Reeves into baseless criminal proceedings to punish him for challenging the county’s civil forfeiture machine. Rejecting claims of absolute immunity, the court held that the assistant prosecutor can be sued for using the criminal process as a tool of retaliation—a ruling that clears the way for Reeves’s First Amendment and malicious-prosecution claims to proceed. 

“Today’s decision sends a powerful message: When government officials abuse their authority to silence critics, they don’t get a free pass,” said Kirby Thomas West, an Institute for Justice attorney representing Reeves. “Robert stood up to Wayne County’s unconstitutional forfeiture program, and today the court has confirmed that he has a right to hold the prosecutor accountable for retaliating against him for taking that stand.” 

Reeves’s ordeal began in 2019, when police seized his 1991 Camaro using a controversial legal tool called civil forfeiture. That allowed the county to seize and keep his car without charging him with a crime. The day after he teamed up with IJ, in February 2020, to file a federal class action lawsuit aimed at dismantling Wayne County’s lucrative car-forfeiture racket, county prosecutors revived a long-dormant investigation and charged him with concealing stolen property—charges a judge dismissed twice for lack of evidence. Reeves and IJ filed a second lawsuit alleging those prosecutions were a coordinated effort to derail his civil rights case and intimidate others who might speak out. 

While today’s ruling does not end the litigation, it breathes new life into Reeves’s quest to expose the county’s vendetta and to secure damages for the years-long cloud that wrongful felony charges cast over his life and his landmark effort to reform forfeiture in Detroit. 

The case is part of IJ’s broader Project on Immunity and Accountability, which fights to ensure that government officials—and the legal doctrines that too often shield them—are held to the same constitutional standards as the citizens they serve. From Michigan to Texas to the U.S. Supreme Court, IJ is working to guarantee that when Americans exercise their rights, retaliation by those in power is met with justice.