by P.D. Lesko

Note: The Ann Arbor Independent sent a request for comment and questions to the County Prosecutor, Victoria Burton-Harris and Christina Hines via email. Read that email here.

Sources inside and outside the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s office allege that County Prosecutor Eli Savit released an October 21 public statement in which Savit attempted to discredit a 27-year-old, Black victim of sexual and domestic violence, because the victim spoke to the media. In his statement posted to Facebook, Savit writes, “Our office does not typically publicize ongoing cases or investigations. Today, however, we dismissed charges against an individual who was accused of several high-profile charges involving violence, sexual assault, and stalking—and whose case has been discussed widely in the community. We wish to be transparent about our reasons for doing so.”

Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners Chair Susan E. Shink, a lawyer, was asked if she thought Savit’s statement was fair, balanced and accurate. She refused to comment.

Audio recordings and other information shared with The Ann Arbor Independent show, instead, that Savit issued the statement because the victim had exercised her First Amendment rights. The victim spoke publicly about concerns related to the investigatory and prosecutorial handling of the 15 felonies filed against her alleged assailant, Jeffrey Dwayne Smith.

Multiple sources said in interviews that the Prosecutor claimed he was “forced” to issue his statement, because the victim had spoken to [The Ann Arbor Independent]. Ironically, domestic violence experts say a common tactic of someone with an abusive personality is to claim that the victim “forced” the assailant to injure them. Perhaps, the victim said something she or he “shouldn’t” have said, or committed some infraction of the assailant’s “rules.” Such behavior is termed “reactive abuse.”

The victim had raised concerns about Savit’s handling of the prosecution of her alleged assailant. Jeffrey Dwayne Smith had been jailed on September 19, held on a $3 million cash bond, and charged by Savit’s office. Then, on October 21, at a preliminary hearing before Judge Cedric Simpson, First Assistant Prosecutor Christina Hines dropped the charges against Smith due to lack of evidence. The Prosecutor’s office has not yet officially closed its investigation into Smith. After Hines’s October 21 court appearance, Savit went on the offensive and in his statement shifted blame onto the victim, claiming to be “transparent” about why the Smith prosecution had so spectacularly imploded.

Prosecutor Eli Savit, when asked by email whether he had issued the statement because the victim had turned to the media with her concerns over his handling of her case, did not respond.

Guy Conti, local Ann Arbor civil rights lawyer and one-time judicial candidate, is assisting the victim. He said of Savit’s statement, “I have never seen anything like it. No other lawyer I’ve talked to has seen anything like it. It’s mind-boggling.”

Domestic violence activist Nicole Beverly and others who communicated with Savit and First Assistant Prosecutor Hines prior to the statement’s release, say they were told no public statement would be issued.

On October 21, First Assistant Prosecutor Hines, when speaking to Beverly, who has been assisting the victim, allegedly said that should the victim continue to speak to the media, and should the “negative publicity” continue, the Prosecutor would release a much longer statement, which would be much more damaging to the victim. In an audio recording shared by another individual with The Ann Arbor Independent, Christina Hines can be heard saying that the Prosecutor released his statement, “because [the victim] talked to The Ann Arbor Independent.” Hines acknowledges the victim “has First Amendment rights,” and then repeats that Savit released the statement because the victim spoke to the media. At no time during the recording does Hines, hired by Savit in early-2021, question his decision to violate the First Amendment rights and damage the credibility of her witness.

Hines did not respond to a request for comment.

Savit’s staffers, stunned and infuriated by the Prosecutor’s statement, called it “reprehensible,” “not what we do to victims,” and “riddled with inaccuracies.”

Indeed, in his public statement, Savit makes several wildly inaccurate statements. For example, he writes that the victim had not been raped on a particular date and time, because “forensic evidence from the young woman’s electronic devices suggested that she could not have been at the site of an alleged physical assault at the time she claimed it occurred, because her cell phone was not pinged by cell towers as having been in the location where the victim alleged the rape happened.”

After receiving these questions from The Ann Arbor Independent, Savit quietly changed the above statement in his Facebook post to this: “In addition, forensic evidence from the young woman’s electronic devices suggested that she could not have been at the site of an alleged physical assault at the time she claimed it occurred.”

The victim claims she repeatedly told investigators that her assailant, an IT expert with a degree from EMU, confiscated her phone before the alleged attacks.

Carla Marable, Jeffrey Dwayne Smith’s lawyer, said it was she, at the request of her client, who had requested the cell tower records be obtained, not the detectives assigned to the case. Marable chuckled when it was pointed out that the pings of a cell tower only prove where a cell phone is or is not, not whether a crime has been committed. Marable concurred that cell tower records don’t prove whether a crime has taken place. Yet, in his October 21 statement, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor asserted exactly that.

Savit also claims in his October 21, 2021 statement: “Further, though the young woman asserted that the defendant in this case had ‘hacked’ into her iPhone and was controlling it remotely, any hacking in the manner described is believed to be technologically impossible. Notably, it would be the first known instance of such hacking of an iPhone running iOS 14.7 *anywhere in the world” [sic].

On September 19, 2021, the New York Times reported that Apple had finally patched a zero click remote exploit, first detected in March 2021. Apple closed the spyware flaw in its iPhone, iPad, computer and Apple Watch operating systems. The Times reported that, “using the zero-click infection method, the spyware can turn on a user’s camera and microphone, record messages, texts, emails, calls — even those sent via encrypted messaging and phone apps.”

A month before Savit’s dramatic and grossly inaccurate claim, John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, told the Times: “This spyware can do everything an iPhone user can do on their device and more.”

It’s unknown whether Detective Kevin Parviz, who conducted the forensic examination of the victim’s phones, and who provided the forensic report to Savit, had provided this inaccurate conclusion to Savit, or whether Savit had authored his inaccurate assertions himself. Parviz holds a master’s degree in computer forensics from EMU, and a variety of certifications.

Guy Conti posited Savit made his public statement to shift attention away from what Conti described as Savit’s mishandling of the high profile charges.

Others criticized Savit’s statement on social media.

Fred Zimmerman lives in Ann Arbor. He posted this to Facebook in response to Savit’s statement: “This elaborate explanation is only required because in the throes of “blue wave” passion against illegal police violence and Donald Trump, the citizens of Washtenaw County foolishly elected a soft-on-crime ideologue whose anti-enforcement policy stances require him to do a *lot* of extra explaining to persuade anyone that he is committed to justice for victims.”

Savit’s statement did garner support, as well, though from only a handful of the people who responded on the Prosecutor’s Facebook page. Rachel Tocco is a Project Manager and a Research Area Specialist Senior with Michigan Medicine. Tocco wrote in response to Savit’s statement: “Thank you for your transparency and for emphasizing that you start by believing victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s refreshing to have an ethical, progressive-minded prosecutor.” 

In an October 21 interview, hours before Savit released is statement, Christina Hines told The Ann Arbor Independent, “I don’t want the victim to feel any worse than she already does. I hope other survivors don’t feel like they can’t come forward. We will make sure their cases are investigated.”

Guy Conti said, “There’s no way this [Savit’s statement] doesn’t have a chilling effect on sexual assault and domestic violence victims coming forward. No way.”

In her interview with The Ann Arbor Independent, Hines was surprised by the suggestion that the dismissal of the charges left the Prosecutor open to questions about whether he had jailed an innocent Black man on a $3 million cash bond.

Hines said, “There’s no perfect way to set bond. You have to make the best decision you can.”

The victim, worried that Savit’s office was mishandling the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Smith, had contacted The Ann Arbor Independent to voice her concerns.

Among the concerns were these:

1. Contrary to accepted practices, Savit had the alleged assailant charged, arraigned on a $3 million bond and jailed before he had put together a case against the man, and before investigators had a chance to gather all the necessary evidence. As a result, investigations into 15 felonies, including cyberstalking, were disorganized.
2. The victim said she was asked to sign a medical release just two days before the October 21 preliminary hearing at which First Prosecuting Attorney Christina Hines asked Judge Simpson to dismiss all charges against Jeffrey Dwayne Smith due to lack of evidence. With a subpoena a records request can take weeks. With only a signed release, obtaining medical records can take even longer.
3. The victim alleges that she provided the names of four individuals who would corroborate her claims of sexual assault, including two licensed psychotherapists. On the day of the preliminary hearing, detectives contacted only one of those individuals. The other three individuals were not contacted.
4. The case involved alleged cyberstalking. The Prosecutor’s office turned to Kevin Parviz, a Sheriff’s Department detective, to conduct the forensic examination. Then, two days before the preliminary hearing, the electronics were sent for a more sophisticated forensic examination by Homeland Security. Such examinations can take months.

In his statement Savit says, “We want all survivors to know that we take *very* seriously allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault. And we will pursue them to the fullest extent in the law wherever the evidence dictates. In fact, every avenue *was* pursued in this case….”

In reality, there were several avenues left unexplored, including the Prosecutor’s failure to obtain medical records in the course of investigating alleged sexual assaults.

Eli Savit was recruited to run among a group of legal “progressives” nationwide in an effort by billionaire financier George Soros to make criminal justice on the local level more equitable. Savit had no experience as a criminal prosecutor when he threw his hat into the ring. Soros supported candidates through his Real Justice PAC. Now, months after their elections, Real Justice PAC prosecutors in Los Angeles, San Francisco and in Loudon County, Virginia, are the targets of recall efforts. In San Francisco, two prosecutors in Chesa Boudin’s office resigned and joined the recall effort against their former boss.

Boudin, like Savit, had no experience as a prosecutor before being propelled into office with the glowing endorsements of musician John Legend and Senator Bernie Sanders. Los Angeles prosecutor George Gascon is also facing recall. Like Savit and Boudin, musician John Legend endorsed Gascon, as did Senator Bernie Sanders.

The prosecutor in Loudon County, Virginia who is the subject of a recall effort has made national news. Buta Biberaj had initially refused to prosecute a transgender high schooler who sodomized a 14-year-old female student in a girl’s school bathroom. Instead, Biberaj, whose campaign received $695,000 from the Real Justice PAC, prosecuted the assaulted student’s father and asked for jail time for the man, who became upset and disorderly at a school board meeting. The Loudon County School Board moved the alleged assailant to a different high school, where the student allegedly then committed another sexual assault of a female student in the girl’s bathroom.

Eric Sturgis is a former Ann Arbor City Council candidate and a long-time Ann Arbor resident. He responded to Savit’s statement on Facebook: “This is another example of the Prosecuting Attorney’s not doing their due diligence. So much more could have been done to support the victim. Then for the Prosecuting Attorney’s office to come out and attack the victim like that is unheard of.”

A stalking victim who responded to Savit’s statement on the Prosecutor’s Facebook page claimed that she received a phone call from Savit’s Chief Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Victoria Burton-Harris. Burton-Harris, the woman says, asked her to stop commenting on the Prosecutor’s Facebook post. The woman’s comments, Burton-Harris allegedly told the victim, could impact her case.