A Prosecutor Allegedly Tried To Jail Him for Fighting Civil Forfeiture. He May Finally Get His Day in Court.
A prosecutor who allegedly weaponized the criminal code to retaliate against a man for filing a class-action lawsuit that challenged the notorious civil forfeiture program in Wayne County, Michigan, is not entitled to prosecutorial immunity, a state appeals court ruled Monday, sending the man’s lawsuit against that prosecutor back to the trial court.
It is a significant legal victory when considering that such claims are often dead on arrival.
Police seized Robert Reeves’ Chevrolet Camaro and $2,000 in cash in 2019 on suspicion that he had stolen a skid steer from Home Depot. But as Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella wrote in 2023, Reeves was not arrested or charged with a crime, and he was not able to actually challenge the seizure of his vehicle, as the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office (WCPO) declined to file a notice of intent to forfeit it.
About seven months later, Reeves joined the class-action suit, filed by the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm, which alleged that Wayne County’s civil forfeiture program violated the Constitution in multiple ways. Prosecutors responded expeditiously. First, the WCPO wrote the next day to a state police task force instructing it to release Reeves’ car and his cash. Then, two weeks later, prosecutors filed felony charges against Reeves for allegedly receiving and concealing stolen property. Perhaps most notably, the government asked a judge to suspend his lawsuit while the criminal case against him proceeded, and Wayne County’s Department of Corporati
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