Michigan’s Worst Prosecutors No. 04: Dennis Doherty and the Immunity Machine
In July 2019, Wayne County seized Robert Reeves’ 1991 Chevrolet Camaro and $2,280 in cash. He had not been charged with a crime. He fought for six months to get his property back. When he joined a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the county’s forfeiture program, Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Dennis Doherty revived a dormant warrant request the very next day, narrowed it to name only Reeves, and pushed felony charges. Those charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Doherty’s office refiled them. Dismissed again. Reeves sued. Doherty claimed absolute immunity. A Michigan Court of Appeals panel said no. The Michigan Supreme Court is now watching. This is the story of what prosecutorial immunity is, what it protects, and what it means that one Michigan prosecutor finally could not hide behind it. And it is the story of every Michigan prosecutor who still can.
Reeves joined a federal class-action lawsuit challenging Wayne County’s forfeiture program on February 14, 2020. The next day, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office directed MSP to release his seized property. That same day, Doherty contacted the investigating officer and obtained a revised warrant naming only Reeves. The warrant had sat dormant since September 2019.
The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence at a February 2021 preliminary examination. The office refiled them. A second preliminary examination in January 2022 also resulted in dismissal for lack of evidence. The complaint documents that the county’s corporate counsel used the pending criminal charges as a defense in the federal civil lawsuit, effectively weaponizing the prosecution to impede litigation.
Absolute prosecutorial immunity shields prosecutors from civil lawsuits for judicial or quasi-judicial functions. Courts have interpreted this to cover conduct as severe as fabricating evidence, suborning perjury, and withholding exculpatory material. Doherty claimed this protection. The Michigan Court of Appeals found his conduct was investigative and administrative, not judicial, and therefore covered only by qualified immunity.
The Michigan Supreme Court granted leave in January 2026 to consider whether the Michigan Constitution provides an independent damages remedy for constitutional violations by state actors, separate from federal Section 1983 claims. If the court answers yes, it could significantly expand the accountability exposure of Michigan prosecutors whose conduct falls short of federal constitutional thresholds.
The immunity doctrine that almost shielded Doherty is the same doctrine that has protected Michigan prosecutors for decades. Former Allegan County Prosecutor Myrene Koch and Barry County Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor Pratt both have documented records of retaliatory and coercive conduct. Neither has faced civil accountability of the kind the Reeves litigation has produced.
Was Reeves guilty of anything?
The 36th District Court dismissed the charges twice, both times for lack of evidence, at the preliminary examination stage. A preliminary examination is the threshold at which the court determines whether there is probable cause to proceed. The court found there was not, on two separate occasions with separately filed charges. No conviction resulted. Reeves is seeking $1 in damages in the civil case, plus injunctive relief.
What is civil forfeiture and why does it matter here?
Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize property suspected of being connected to criminal activity without charging the owner with a crime. The owner must then affirmatively fight to get their property back. From 2016 to 2020, Wayne County law enforcement agencies received more than $3.4 million from forfeiture proceeds, while the prosecutor’s office received an additional $578,000. The financial incentive structure is documented. Reeves challenged that structure in court. The prosecution followed.
Has the MSC ruled yet?
No. As of the publication date of this article, the Michigan Supreme Court has granted leave but has not yet issued a ruling. MSC Docket No. 168969. Briefing remains active.
Why is this series called Michigan’s Worst Prosecutors?
Because the documented record, not the title, is what determines the entry. Dunnings (No. 03) was a 19-year elected prosecutor. Doherty is an assistant prosecutor in a large office. The rank does not matter. The conduct does.
The Forfeiture Machine and the Man Who Sued It
Robert Reeves was 26 years old when Wayne County police stopped him at a gas station in July 2019. He had spent more than $9,000 restoring a 1991 Chevrolet Camaro he planned to resell. An associate had invited him to a job site to demonstrate he could operate a skid steer loader. Police were investigating thefts of rental equipment. They detained Reeves for several hours, found nothing to charge him with, and let him go. They kept his car and his cash.
Wayne County’s civil forfeiture program did not require a conviction, or even a charge. The county could hold the property and require the owner to prove it was not connected to criminal activity. Reeves had to hire a lawyer. He fought for six months. During that time, the county did not file a forfeiture complaint, which would have given Reeves a formal mechanism to contest the seizure. The property simply sat.
From 2016 to 2020, Wayne County law enforcement agencies raised $3,453,000 through their share of forfeiture proceeds. The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office received an additional $578,000 over that same period. The financial structure created a direct institutional incentive to seize property and resist challenges to the program. The Institute for Justice, which represents Reeves, described the program as a “lucrative car-forfeiture racket” requiring individuals to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in redemption fees to retrieve their property.
In February 2020, Reeves joined a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Wayne County’s forfeiture program. The lawsuit was filed on February 14, 2020.
On February 15, 2020, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office directed MSP to release Reeves’ car and his cash. That same day, Assistant Prosecutor Dennis Doherty contacted the officer in charge of the September 2019 warrant request, which had sat dormant for five months, and received a revised version that named only Reeves and his associate, omitting others who had also been implicated. Reeves was arrested on May 8, 2020, on two felony counts of receiving and concealing stolen property. He was held in a Detroit jail for three days and released on a $1,000 bond.
The warrant request sat untouched for five months. The day after Reeves filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, the office directed police to return his property and simultaneously revived the dormant warrant, narrowed it to name only the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and pushed it toward charges. That sequence was not coincidental. The amended complaint filed by Reeves’ attorneys states directly that the county and Doherty worked across departments to pursue the criminal prosecution as a coordinated effort to derail the federal civil rights case.
The county’s Department of Corporation Counsel, which was defending against the forfeiture lawsuit, subsequently used the pending criminal charges as a defense in that federal case, asking judges to pause the civil proceedings while the criminal matter played out. The criminal prosecution was, in the documented record, a litigation tactic.
Dismissed. Refiled. Dismissed Again.
Reeves did not get a preliminary examination for nearly a year. The COVID-19 pandemic caused delays. When the hearing finally took place before Judge Kenneth King of the 36th District Court in February 2021, the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Both counts.
The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office refiled the charges on February 25, 2021, seventeen days after the dismissal.
A second preliminary examination took place in January 2022. The charges were dismissed again for lack of evidence.
In March 2023, Reeves filed suit in Wayne County Circuit Court against Doherty, the county, and Davidde Stella, the assistant corporation counsel who coordinated with the prosecutor’s office on the forfeiture defense. The complaint alleged malicious prosecution, abuse of process, and retaliatory prosecution in violation of both federal and Michigan constitutional law.
The trial court dismissed the claims against Doherty on the grounds of absolute prosecutorial immunity. Reeves appealed.
The Immunity Doctrine: What It Is and What It Has Covered
Absolute prosecutorial immunity is not in the Constitution. It is a judicially created doctrine, built case by case over decades, that shields prosecutors from civil lawsuits for acts taken in their capacity as advocates in the judicial process. The Supreme Court established it in Imbler v. Pachtman (1976), reasoning that prosecutors would be unable to do their jobs if every charging decision exposed them to personal civil liability.
The doctrine has expanded far beyond that rationale in practice. Courts have applied absolute immunity to prosecutors who fabricate evidence, suborn perjury, coerce witnesses, and withhold exculpatory material. The individuals harmed by that conduct have, in most cases, no civil recourse against the prosecutor personally. The doctrine has become, in effect, a near-complete shield for prosecutorial misconduct as long as the misconduct occurs within the advocate function.
The same doctrine Doherty invoked has protected Michigan prosecutors across the documented record. Stuart Dunnings III (No. 03 in this series) spent 19 years presiding over prostitution prosecutions while paying for sex himself. No civil lawsuit against him for the downstream effects of his prosecutorial decisions survived immunity doctrine. His personal conduct was ultimately reached only through criminal prosecution by the Attorney General’s office, not civil accountability.
The immunity doctrine functions as a structural guarantee that most victims of prosecutorial misconduct will not see the person who harmed them face personal accountability in civil court, regardless of how egregious the conduct. That structural guarantee is what the Reeves litigation is now contesting.
The Court of Appeals Ruling
The Michigan Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Reeves v. County of Wayne, No. 367444, on June 9, 2025. The three-judge panel addressed the immunity question directly.
The court held that absolute immunity covers only judicial or quasi-judicial functions: actions a prosecutor takes as an advocate in the courtroom. Investigative and administrative conduct, by contrast, is entitled only to qualified immunity, a lower standard that allows lawsuits to proceed when the violated right was clearly established.
The court found that Doherty’s conduct in contacting the investigating officer, obtaining a revised warrant narrowed to name only Reeves, and instigating the refiling of charges was investigative and administrative in nature, not judicial. It was the conduct of a detective, not an advocate. The trial court’s grant of absolute immunity was reversed. Doherty’s First Amendment retaliation and malicious prosecution claims were remanded for further proceedings under a qualified immunity analysis.
The court was explicit: prosecutors do not get to use the criminal charging process as a tool of retaliation and then claim the absolute immunity designed to protect their judicial advocacy functions. As the panel noted, Doherty’s conduct fell into the category of “activities normally performed by a detective or police officer,” which the Supreme Court’s own doctrine excluded from absolute immunity in Burns v. Reed (1991).
IJ attorney Kirby Thomas West described the ruling as sending a clear message: when government officials abuse their authority to silence critics, they do not get a free pass.
The Michigan BGS List catalogs law enforcement officers and prosecutors with documented credibility, misconduct, or Brady-Giglio-Santobello concerns. Free, public, sourced to primary documents. Doherty’s entry is there. So are Koch’s and Nakfoor Pratt’s.
View the BGS ListThe Michigan Supreme Court and the Question That Changes Everything
Reeves applied to the Michigan Supreme Court. On January 22, 2026, the court granted leave. MSC Docket No. 168969.
The question before the court is whether the Michigan Constitution, independent of federal Section 1983, provides a direct damages remedy when a state actor violates a Michigander’s constitutional rights. This is not a narrow procedural question. It is a foundational one about whether Michigan residents have a state-law path to accountability when federal doctrine fails them.
Federal Section 1983 claims against prosecutors face immunity doctrine, qualified immunity for individual officers, and a body of case law that has systematically narrowed the path to recovery. If the Michigan Supreme Court holds that the state constitution provides an independent damages remedy, Michigan residents would have a state-law alternative that does not depend on the federal immunity architecture.
That would mean that a Michigan prosecutor who retaliates against a civil rights plaintiff, who coerces a plea, who suppresses exculpatory evidence, could face a state constitutional damages claim that does not automatically collapse on immunity grounds. The implications for every entry in the Michigan Brady-Giglio-Santobello List, and for every future victim of documented prosecutorial misconduct in this state, are significant. The court has not yet ruled. But it agreed to hear the case. That is not nothing.
Michigan’s Pattern: The Prosecutors the Ruling Has Not Yet Reached
The Reeves litigation is exceptional precisely because it reached the Court of Appeals and now the Supreme Court. Most victims of retaliatory or coercive prosecutorial conduct in Michigan do not have the Institute for Justice representing them. Most do not have the documented timeline that Reeves has, a warrant revived the day after a lawsuit was filed. Most are working with incomplete records, limited resources, and a doctrine that presumes the prosecutor acted in good faith.
Clutch Justice has documented two Michigan county prosecutors whose conduct illustrates what the immunity machine looks like when it works exactly as designed.
Former Allegan County Prosecutor Myrene Koch presided over an office in which an assistant prosecutor appeared at work intoxicated on a documented basis, handled child abuse cases while impaired, and was never reported to the Attorney Grievance Commission by Koch or any attorney in the office. A former county resident was arrested at 11 PM without a physical warrant being produced, charged with harboring a felon, denied access to a public defender for weeks, and had his charges dropped without prejudice after probable cause could not be established for a probable cause hearing. The charges were not dismissed with prejudice. They can be refiled. No civil accountability mechanism was engaged against Koch or the deputies involved. The immunity doctrine did not need to be invoked because no lawsuit was filed. The structural result is the same: no accountability.
Barry County Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor Pratt’s office was documented in Clutch Justice’s investigation of Barry County’s 99.9% conviction rate, a figure driven by undocumented plea agreements in which defendants were explicitly told they would face maximum sentencing if they declined. At least two individuals achieved resentencing through appeals. The Michigan Supreme Court granted remand in a related matter. Nakfoor Pratt’s office was also documented in the multi-county stalking and harassment network connected to Kevin Lindke, where a police report was not generated despite children being among the documented complainants. No civil accountability claim has proceeded against Nakfoor Pratt. Immunity doctrine has not had to be invoked. The structural barrier has been sufficient.
Doherty’s conduct was documented in real time, with a timestamp. The day after the lawsuit was filed, the dormant warrant was revived. That clarity of evidence is rare. Most retaliatory prosecutorial conduct does not announce itself with a one-day timestamp. It operates through charging decisions, plea pressure, case prioritization, and institutional relationships that are harder to document and nearly impossible to litigate under current immunity doctrine.
The Reeves litigation succeeded in reaching the Court of Appeals because the evidence was unusually clean. The Michigan Supreme Court may clarify the constitutional question. Neither development automatically reaches Koch, Nakfoor Pratt, or the dozens of other Michigan prosecutors whose documented conduct has never faced civil accountability. The immunity machine is not broken. It has one documented crack in it. That crack is currently before the Michigan Supreme Court.
What Comes Next
The Michigan Supreme Court’s ruling in the Reeves matter will determine whether Michigan’s constitution can function as an independent floor for prosecutorial accountability when federal doctrine fails. If the court holds that it can, the implications will extend beyond Wayne County and beyond Doherty. Every documented instance of retaliatory prosecution in Michigan, every coerced plea, every suppressed exculpatory record, becomes potentially actionable under a state constitutional theory that does not run through the federal immunity architecture.
That ruling has not come yet. As of the publication of this article, briefing in MSC Docket No. 168969 remains active.
Reeves is asking for $1 in damages. He spent years with felony charges hanging over his life, lost the ability to challenge the county’s forfeiture machine without facing prosecution, and watched the county use those charges as a weapon in civil court. He is asking for $1 because the principle is the point. The principle is that a prosecutor cannot weaponize the charging function to silence a civil rights plaintiff and then claim the absolute immunity designed to protect the courtroom advocate.
The Michigan Supreme Court will decide whether Michigan law agrees. Clutch Justice will be watching.
A Michigan Supreme Court ruling establishing an independent state constitutional damages remedy is the most significant near-term development. Beyond that: mandatory prosecutorial accountability reviews for offices with documented patterns of charges dismissed for lack of probable cause; elimination of the financial incentive structure in civil forfeiture that created the conditions for the Reeves retaliation; and a functioning AG office willing to investigate retaliatory prosecution patterns rather than routing complaints to bodies with limited enforcement authority.
That last structural change is the one Michigan currently lacks most visibly. Attorney General Dana Nessel has presided over a prosecutorial accountability apparatus that routes constituent complaints about misconduct to the Attorney Grievance Commission, a body with limited enforcement authority and no mandate to investigate systemic patterns. Prosecutors who allege retaliation against complainants, by contrast, receive substantially more direct engagement from the AG’s office. The directional asymmetry is documented across multiple Clutch Justice investigations spanning Barry County, Allegan County, St. Joseph County, and Wayne County.
Nessel’s office has also declined to engage the prison reform dimension of this pattern. Michigan’s prison population includes individuals whose convictions rest on prosecutorial conduct that was never reviewed, on plea agreements that were never disclosed, and on records that were, in Wayne County’s case, illegally destroyed. The AG’s Public Integrity Unit has not initiated a systematic review of any of those categories. When the Metro Times reported on the Wayne County file destruction in 2024, Nessel’s office stated it was not investigating because no formal complaint had been filed. The destruction of prosecutorial records implicating potentially wrongful convictions is not a matter that should require a formal complaint to trigger AG attention.
The pattern across Nessel’s tenure is not a series of independent judgment calls. It is a consistent posture: prosecutorial misconduct is addressed when the political conditions favor it, and deflected when they do not. The Reeves litigation succeeded not because the AG’s office engaged, but because the Institute for Justice did. Michigan residents whose misconduct claims do not attract public interest law firm representation are left with the AGC referral and little else. All three structural changes, the MSC constitutional remedy, the forfeiture incentive elimination, and a functioning AG accountability posture, remain absent from Michigan’s current landscape.
Bluebook: Williams, Rita. Michigan’s Worst Prosecutors No. 04: Dennis Doherty and the Immunity Machine, Clutch Justice (July 5, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/2026/07/05/michigans-worst-prosecutors-dennis-doherty/.
APA 7: Williams, R. (2026, July 5). Michigan’s worst prosecutors no. 04: Dennis Doherty and the immunity machine. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/07/05/michigans-worst-prosecutors-dennis-doherty/
MLA 9: Williams, Rita. “Michigan’s Worst Prosecutors No. 04: Dennis Doherty and the Immunity Machine.” Clutch Justice, 5 July 2026, clutchjustice.com/2026/07/05/michigans-worst-prosecutors-dennis-doherty/.
Chicago: Williams, Rita. “Michigan’s Worst Prosecutors No. 04: Dennis Doherty and the Immunity Machine.” Clutch Justice, July 5, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/07/05/michigans-worst-prosecutors-dennis-doherty/.
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