Detroit — Jarvis Butts looked down at his feet while girls and women he harmed sat on the witness stand in front of him and sobbed.
Butts, 43, was in Wayne County Circuit Court Thursday to be sentenced for the murder and sexual assault of Na’Ziyah Harris and the sexual assaults of five young girls ranging in age from 4 to 13. Judge Nicholas Hathaway sentenced him to the previously agreed upon 35 to 60 years that came with his guilty plea to second-degree murder.
Na’Ziyah’s grandmother and aunt, Butts’ sister and three girls he sexually assaulted gave victim impact statements Thursday. He glanced briefly at his sister and one of the girls as they approached the witness stand, but looked back down at his feet almost immediately.
One of the girls who spoke said Na’Ziyah was her best friend.
“I no longer look at you as a father figure, no longer as a hero. I look at you as a monster who caused me trauma and made me look at men different,” one of the girls said. “You did very hurtful things to me. I live with the trouble you caused me.”
After her last statement, the girl buried her face in her hands and began to sob. She struggled to walk out of the courtroom due to the force of her tears.
Butts was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for each of his five sexual assault cases, to be served at the same time as his murder sentence for killing Na’Ziyah. He pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for his abuse of the five girls.
Prosecutors contended that Butts allegedly got Na’Ziyah pregnant after sexually assaulting her, and then killed her. Her 9-year-old cousin testified during a preliminary exam in January 2025 that she saw Butts assault Na’Ziyah at his auto shop, and that Butts tried to have sex with the cousin, but she said no. Butts was dating Na’Ziyah’s aunt at the time he started sexually assaulting her niece.
The courtroom was packed with family and friends of Na’Ziyah and the other victims. Several people were told to leave the courtroom for making comments during victim impact statements, including telling Na’Ziyah’s grandmother to “shut up” while she was talking about how her address and phone number had been put on social media and that she did not feel safe in her home.
“Every day I wake up without her I wake up feeling depressed,” said Na’Ziyah’s grandmother, Annette Harris. “I love her and I miss her dearly. I can’t tell her that because her life was taken from her.”
Harris cried throughout her entire statement and began sobbing so hard she could not speak toward the end. Assistant Prosecutor Matthew Makepeace took over reading for her and Harris left the courtroom.
Marketta Harris, Na’Ziyah’s aunt, asked that Hathaway give Butts the electric chair, “a life for a life.”
“You are a serial habitual predator,” Marketta Harris said. “I’ll never be able to get to hold her again, I’ll never be able to listen to her, see her smile. … I’ll never get to be able to have that chance, ever again, because of you. It hurts.”
Butts’ sister, Tijuana Butts, testified at her brother’s preliminary examination that she saw Na’Ziyah get out of her brother’s truck at the auto shop between 4:30 and 6 p.m. Jan. 9, 2024, the last day she was seen alive.
“For the last two years, I have had to go back to that day when I saw a little girl I did not know, that I had never seen,” Butts said Thursday. “I wish that there was a sign, but she looked OK and I believed she was someone else’s niece. I had no reason not to believe what my brother said to me.
“That day will forever haunt me.”
Tijuana Butts said Na’Ziyah’s story brought a lot of other victims out. She said she hopes her brother will have a heart and tell Na’Ziyah’s family where her body is.
“There are many Na’Ziyahs and many other victims that are unfortunately being harmed right now at this moment and people are turning a blind eye to it and not paying attention,” Tijuana Butts said. “We need to do better as a family in protecting our children from monsters.”
One of the girls that Butts sexually assaulted had her sister read her victim impact statement as the girl sat up in the witness stand with her, wearing sparkly black shoes.
“When I was just 4 years old, Mr. Jarvis Butts took away my childhood and shattered my sense of safety,” the girl’s sister read. “Though I am still young I have faced years of pain and trauma caused by his actions.”
She said she believes Butts will continue to abuse children, even once he is old and released from prison.
“Let his consequences be so no other child faces what I had,” the girl wrote.
Another girl echoed her sentiments, adding: “Mr. Butts was already a convicted sex offender when he abused me in 2014.”
“Despite knowing the harm and having every opportunity to stop, he continued to abuse children,” she said.
Butts’ sentencing caps off a long ordeal for Na’Ziyah’s family, who pleaded with local enforcement and the public to help find the young girl after she didn’t return home from school on Jan. 9, 2024.
Some relatives said they’d called Child Protective Services multiple times on a man they suspected of having inappropriate behavior with children, including Na’Ziyah, but nothing was done. State officials said they couldn’t disclose the existence of an investigation.
“So many systems failed Na’Ziyah,” Jernell Smith-Holland, Na’Ziyah’s great-aunt, said in May 2024. “This whole thing is just wrong on so many levels.”
