ANN ARBOR, MI — Eli Savit is now officially Washtenaw County’s chief prosecutor.
The 37-year-old attorney and Ann Arbor native was ceremonially sworn into office by Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget McCormack in the University of Michigan Law Quad courtyard Saturday, Jan. 2.
Also sworn in was Victoria Burton-Harris, Savit’s chief assistant prosecuting attorney.
Joined by friends, family and activists, they reiterated their pledge to reform criminal justice in Washtenaw County with racial equity in mind.
“We know simply by setting foot in a courtroom or doing even a surface-level analysis of the numbers that we have tremendous racial inequity in our justice system here in Washtenaw County,” said Savit, who points to a report by Citizens for Racial Equity in Washtenaw showing disparities.
Burton-Harris described the reforms they have coming as an opportunity to reshape society.
“Our office will seek to divert more people out of the criminal justice system and into the hands of community partners who are equipped to provide the much-needed resources to address the root causes of crime,” she said, adding they want to invest in people, not jails and prisons.
“We seek to work with community agencies and partner with them, prior to authorizing criminal charges, so that we can build out the first-ever, pre-charge restorative justice program in the state,” she said. “We will also stand up a conviction integrity unit, expungement unit, so that we can redress the wrongs of the failed war on drugs and wrongful prosecution.”
Savit, a 2010 UM Law School graduate and former public school teacher, ran for office this year on a reformist platform with national backing that included endorsements from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and singer John Legend.
He chose the location for Saturday’s ceremony because it’s where he started his legal journey.
“It is also where I saw, from the time I was a law student, from a lawyer’s perspective, the many injustices that our criminal legal system has perpetuated for far too long,” he said.
“When I was here at this law school, I worked in the juvenile justice clinic as a student attorney. And we represented a client, a 16-year-old high school student, who was facing a lifetime of consequences — criminal sanctions that would follow him around for the rest of his life — for effectively engaging in horseplay in the hallway when he was a freshman.”
Savit said he also volunteered at a juvenile detention center where he saw bright, inquisitive children who deserved a future and those experiences stayed with him.
“In the coming weeks, we are going to be releasing policies and making our first steps toward once and for all ending the criminalization of childhood,” Savit said.
“When young people make mistakes, it should be an opportunity to teach. It should be an opportunity to help them grow. It should be an opportunity to help them get back on the right track.”
Adolescent minds are still developing and do not respond well to punishment, Savit said.
“The data shows that a punishment-oriented approach for young people actually makes it more likely that they will commit future crimes,” he said. “We cannot continue to ignore that.”
Q&A: How Eli Savit plans to reform criminal justice in Washtenaw County
By statute, Savit officially took office Jan. 1, replacing outgoing Prosecutor Brian Mackie, who served in office 28 years.
In a 12-page policy directive Jan. 1, Savit’s first official act was to rescind so-called “zero tolerance” policies he said prohibited assistant prosecutors from “pleading down” certain types of cases, such as crimes involving guns.
Inflexible policies prevented certain defendants from engaging in substance-use treatment or rehabilitation options in lieu of incarceration and precluded young defendants from opportunities to clear their records if they avoided further brushes with the law, according to Savit.
Going forward, the county’s assistant prosecutors are now directed to consider the individual circumstances at the center of each case and pursue outcomes in the interest of justice.
“A one-sized-fits-all approach to justice — divorced from the factual circumstances of each unique case — is not justice at all,” the new directive states.
“The only exception is the Domestic Violence/Homicide Prevention Protocol,” it adds. “Domestic violence is an offense for which recidivism rates are particularly high, and the risk of serious injury and death is severe. The prosecutor’s office is thus proceeding carefully before enacting any changes to its current domestic violence policies.”
Savit, who is keeping roughly a couple dozen assistant prosecutors from Mackie’s office while bringing in new leadership, also gave his staff notice Jan. 1 he’s launching an independent audit related to racial disparities in outcomes of cases prosecuted in Washtenaw County.
Third-party researchers will have complete access to case files to identify points in the justice system where people are being treated differently because of their race, Savit said, adding he’ll be announcing a partnership for that next week.
“We will identify the disparities and we will eliminate them,” Savit pledged, noting the work by researchers will be funded by philanthropic donations, not taxpayer dollars.
“At long last, we will look squarely in the eye the searing legacy of racial inequity in our justice system,” he said.
Assistant prosecutors’ plea-bargaining decisions may be highlighted by the audit, and inability or unwillingness to correct biased decision-making may be cause for discipline, including termination, Savit has told his staff.
In speeches on the Law Quad on Saturday, Savit and Burton-Harris also reiterated their pledges to end cash bail, a system by which criminal defendants have to pay a certain amount of money to gain their freedom pending trial.
“We know that wealth-based detention is unjust, is inequitable, and we know from experiences in other communities that we don’t need it to keep our community safe,” Savit said.
“We will no longer seek to detain people based on the amount of money in their bank account. Everything that we do will be based on an individualized assessment of what is needed for public safety and what is needed for rehabilitation.”
Calling the war on drugs an abject failure, Savit also said he’ll be rolling out policies in the coming weeks around substance use and diverting people into treatment programs.
Savit believes there’s wide support for the types of reforms he plans to implement.
“If you look at some of the polling numbers around criminal justice reform, Americans and Michiganders, they don’t favor stringent mandatory-minimum policies,” he said.
“If you look at the bipartisan work done in the Michigan Legislature, there’s a real movement now among both Republicans and Democrats to reform our criminal justice system, because there’s a widely shared understanding that what’s been done hasn’t been working.”
As for diversion programs, Savit said he’s already been in talks with partners such as Community Mental Health.
“We’ve similarly been having conversations with community partners, mentorship programs, education-oriented programs, substance-use treatment programs around putting in applications and fundraising to build up their programs so we have more capacity to address these issues outside of the criminal justice system,” he said.
“This isn’t something you typically see from prosecutors’ offices, but I plan to devote staff time and my own time and support to helping them get the resources they need.”
Savit acknowledges it’s an unusual time to be taking over the prosecutor’s office amid the COVID-19 pandemic when much is being done virtually. He’s fortunate to have a private office and plans on going in every day, he said, though he notes he’ll be walking into largely empty offices.
“We have a sort of skeleton crew in the office that’s maintaining the basic functionality of it, but a lot of the (staff) are working remotely, consistent with the governor’s guidance,” he said. “A lot of the court hearings are remote and will presumably continue to be remote until we get through this pandemic.”
Savit has no prosecuting experience but has served as Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s legal counsel, clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, worked for federal appellate judges and worked at a private law firm.
He reflected on the legacy of Bader Ginsburg, who died in September, as he prepared to take office, he said Saturday, recalling her mantra was, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”
While that comes from the Book of Deuteronomy, it also aligns with what the U.S. Supreme Court has said about prosecutors — that their obligation in criminal cases is not to win, but that “justice shall be done,” Savit said.
“Too frequently, that admonition has gone unheeded. Not any longer,” he said.
He can’t promise his office won’t make mistakes, but he can promise to pursue justice and equity, he said.
“What I can promise you is that we will pursue rehabilitation and restoration and solutions that, in the long term, keep our community healthier and safer,” he said.
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Savit sworn in as Washtenaw County prosecutor, begins work to reshape justice system - MLive.com
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