Law360 (June 11, 2026, 5:06 PM EDT) -- An Alaskan Indigenous man who spent years battling a first-degree murder charge in connection to the death of his older brother is suing former Metlakatla Police Department officials, supervisors and tribal policymakers over the now-dismissed allegation, saying the investigation should have been handled with care, honesty and respect for the truth.

Issac Henderson, a member of the Metlakatla Indian Community, says officers of the tribal police department mishandled critical evidence following his 2021 arrest and relied on false and incomplete witness narratives that eventually led to Ketchikan Superior Court Judge Daniel Doty dismissing the charges against him last June.

"The prosecution eventually collapsed because the investigation could not be trusted. The Superior Court dismissed the indictment with prejudice after finding serious discovery violations, evidence-handling failures, chain-of-custody problems, and prejudice to Isaac's ability to defend himself," he argues in the Wednesday complaint.

Issac Henderson is suing former Metlakatla Police Chief Bruce R. Janes, former police officers Austin S. McKeehan and Jason J. Henry, Metlakatla Mayor and City Manager Albert G. Smith and other currently unidentified supervisory, policymaking, law-enforcement and governmental entities for violations of the Civil Rights Act, the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and Alaska state law.

He is asking the court to award him compensatory damages and punitive damages.

Issac Henderson was 18 when he was accused of shooting his older brother, Tyler Henderson, in December 2021 during a family altercation in Metlakatla, Alaska, in which they had been drinking, according to the complaint. Both brothers were standout basketball players for the Metlakatla Chiefs and were featured in the documentary "Alaskan Nets," it says.

From the beginning, Issac Henderson and his uncle, John Henderson, who was at home at the time of the altercation, both stated that Tyler Henderson was accidentally shot, the lawsuit says. Issac Henderson grabbed a gun during the altercation, and it accidentally discharged during the struggle, it says.

Tyler Henderson later died at a hospital from his injuries, the lawsuit says.

According to the lawsuit, responding officers to the scene from the Metlakatla Police Department landed on "a clean intentional-murder narrative" by relying on principal evidence from a witness who was intoxicated and emotionally distressed at the time of the shooting and discounted the statements of Issac Henderson and his uncle.

"MPD did not treat the competing accounts as a reason to slow down, separate witnesses, preserve every physical lead, and avoid prematurely hardening a theory. Instead, the investigation quickly moved toward an intentional shooting theory," the lawsuit says.

Issac Henderson also says that the tribal police department gave the state of Alaska an investigative record supporting homicide charges that left out key exculpatory facts and included distorted witness evidence.

In addition, he argues, the department failed to properly preserve or document physical evidence at the scene – such as bullet trajectories and embedded glass – that could have corroborated his claims of self-defense or accident.

The case ended in June 2025 when Judge Doty dismissed the charges, saying in the order that it became clear during a pre-trial hearing a month prior that the prosecution had not turned over evidence to Issac Henderson's attorney that could have furthered his claims of self-defense or an accident.

Calling it a "unique and egregious pattern of discovery violations and misrepresentations" by the state, the prosecutor and the Metlakatla Police Department, the judge found that a fair trial for Issac Henderson would be impossible, and the only possible remedy is dismissal to address and deter future systematic misconduct, according to the order.

However, according to the lawsuit, the damage to Issac Henderson had been done at that point, with him losing years of his life to the murder prosecution.

John S. Phillips, an Alaskan attorney representing Issac Henderson, said in a Monday statement that his client was separated from his community following the incident and was excluded from Metlakatla and the Annette Islands Reserve.

In addition, the attorney says, his client lost access to his family, housing, benefits, support and reputation.

"This case is not an attack on Metlakatla," Phillips stated on Wednesday. "It is the opposite. Metlakatla is a proud community, and its people deserve police work worthy of that pride. They do not deserve a system where key evidence is ignored or destroyed, records cannot be trusted, and an eighteen-year-old is left to face a murder prosecution for years. Accountability is not disrespect. It is how you protect a community."

A representative of the Metlakatla Indian Community could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.

Henderson is represented by John S. Phillips.

Counsel information for the defendants was not available on Thursday.

The case is Henderson v. Janes et al., case number 1:26-cv-00014, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska.

--Editing by Vaqas Asghar.

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