Latest news with #AlaskaDepartmentofTransportationandPublicFacilities
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Alaska state judge dismisses murder case, citing widespread misconduct by local police
The Southeast Alaska village of Metlakatla is seen in an undated photo. (Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities photo) In an extraordinary order, a Ketchikan Superior Court judge has dismissed murder charges against a Metlakatla man, citing a lengthy series of errors, lies and evidence concealed from defense attorneys by the Metlakatla Police Department. The errors, Judge Daniel Doty said last week in an order, were so severe that defendant Isaac Henderson cannot be guaranteed a fair trial. The order dismisses the charges against Henderson with prejudice, meaning that they cannot be brought again. The dismissal was first reported by the Ketchikan Daily News. 'The record in this case established a unique and egregious pattern of discovery violations and misrepresentations about discovery,' Doty wrote. 'No remedy short of dismissal with prejudice would remedy the prejudice to Mr. Henderson or deter similar violations in the future,' he said. Prosecutors with the Alaska Department of Law have filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider his dismissal. Meanwhile, Angie Kemp, director of the department's criminal division since 2022, said on Friday that her division has suspended all work with the Metlakatla Police Department until the department undergoes reforms. That extreme — possibly unprecedented — act means state attorneys will not prosecute criminal cases coming from Metlakatla's police department unless they involve particularly serious crimes. 'It's an extreme remedy, but one that's necessary,' Kemp said by phone on Friday. Metlakatla is located at the tip of southern Southeast Alaska, on the Annette Island Reserve, Alaska's only Indian reservation. Bruce Janes, a member of the local police department for 31 years and chief for eight, is no longer working there, Kemp said. She's since spoken with Desmond King, chief of Metlakatla's fire department and now its interim police chief, requesting changes to police department procedures. 'And I've explained to him that until those steps are taken, the Department of Law can't continue to prosecute cases, absent extreme circumstances, out of Metlakatla where those cases involve Metlakatla Police Department officers,' Kemp said. Metlakatla Mayor Albert Smith was out of the office and unavailable to talk by phone, town staff said on Friday. A message left on his cellphone was not returned. King, speaking by phone, said that in addition to acting as fire chief and interim police chief, he's also the town's deputy police commissioner. 'I actually carry a few hats right now, while we're in the rebuilding stage. … We're in a very stressful situation,' he said. Asked about Kemp's decision to temporarily stop work with Metlakatla's police, he said he was familiar with it. 'I totally understand that,' King said. 'That's what I would expect them to do, because it was some internal issues that we have to fix, and we're really going to be at Ground Zero. It's all about building everything as fast as we can, but as responsible as we can.' Smith declined extensive comment, citing the mayor's unavailability on Friday, but said that officials in Metlakatla are aware of the department's problems and the need to fix them. 'It's going to be a long, long-term project, but there's a lot of of the infrastructure and smaller things that we can take care of immediately and be very proactive in re-establishing all the relationships we have with the DA's office, working with the Alaska Police Standards Council, (Bureau of Indian Affairs) Justice System, they're involved now. We have a lot of support. We definitely don't feel alone,' he said. The turmoil surrounding the Metlakatla Police Department stems from the 2021 shooting death of Tyler Henderson. After an investigation by local police and Alaska State Troopers, the Department of Law charged Henderson's brother, Isaac, with his murder. The case was frequently delayed, and Isaac Henderson's defense was repeatedly reassigned to five different public defenders who apparently took little action on the issue as it lingered in court. Four years on, it remains unclear whether the shooting was accidental, an act of self-defense — as Isaac Henderson claimed — or murder. As Henderson's trial approached, his attorneys — John Phillips and Julia Graves — began challenging some of the evidence that prosecutors planned to present. Neither attorney answered phone calls Friday seeking comment. During a series of evidentiary hearings in April, former Metlakatla police officer Austin McKeehan said that he falsified evidence reports. Former police chief Janes, under questioning, said he had made false statements to the grand jury that indicted Henderson, falsely claiming that he submitted a piece of evidence to the state crime lab. At the hearing, Janes admitted that the investigation was 'very sloppy' and 'probably the worst I've ever done.' In another hearing, Janes testified that the department routinely destroys evidence logs every year, making it impossible to guarantee that evidence is properly stored and not tampered with. On May 5, at a hearing the judge called 'shocking,' Janes revealed previously undisclosed witness interviews to both prosecutors and defense. During a trial's 'discovery' process, prosecutors are required to share possible evidence with defense attorneys. Janes, at this point in the case, produced several pieces of hard-copy evidence from within the case file that had not been shared with either prosecutors or the defense. 'If the prosecutor did review the file, the prosecutor saw a number of items that he had not seen before but failed to disclose those documents or identify them during the discovery hearing. If the prosecutor did not review the file, the failure to do so is inexplicable,' Doty wrote in his order. Before another hearing, Janes provided several hard drives to the prosecutor. Those contained possible evidence. The state contends that there was no time to share them with the defense before the hearing; the defense argued that withholding them until the hearing was part of a continued pattern. Under normal circumstances, it would be appropriate for a judge to postpone the case until everyone is certain that all evidence has been fairly shared. In this case, Doty said, he doesn't have confidence that will ever occur. 'Police officers knowingly completed inaccurate chain of custody logs, destroyed chain of custody logs, made contradictory and irreconcilable statements under oath about what physical evidence had been collected or tested, and stated — repeatedly and falsely — that they had provided all the available evidence in the case,' Doty wrote in his order. 'More importantly, though, the evidence here raised serious and substantial questions about whether the state has committed additional discovery violations that have not yet come to light,' he said, using 'state' to refer to both police and prosecutors. Given that doubt, he said, it is appropriate to dismiss the case. 'In short, the police misrepresented or forgot so many facts about discovery that it is impossible to determine, and will likely not be possible to ever determine, whether the state complied with its discovery obligations in this case.' In court, the Hendersons' mother, Naomi Leask, said she and other members of her family moved from Metlakatla to Ketchikan in order to stay with Isaac Henderson and secure his bail. Speaking to Doty, she said that regardless of how the case is resolved, they do not expect to ever return to Metlakatla. In town, said King, the interim police chief, there's work to be done. 'The temperature of our community, it feels a little off, the anguish and stuff that people feel,' he said. 'But you know, it's improving from this day, moving forward. We have to make sure we do it right and do it right by our people.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
January cold returns as snow makes for slick roads after weeks of warmth
Jan. 27—An intense bout of snow and dropping temperatures led to slick roads around Anchorage Monday after several weeks of unseasonably warm weather. The Anchorage School District has canceled all after-school sports, activities and community rentals due to "worsening road conditions," officials said in an announcement before noon. Prolonged wet, windy weather had saturated Southcentral Alaska through the weekend, leaving a trail of potholes, high water and avalanches. Now the cold is muscling its way back in. In other words: False spring breakup is over. Second winter is here. Temperatures began dropping toward January norms Monday morning, and snow returned to Anchorage and Mat-Su. Slick conditions were reported on the Glenn Highway and in the city. Two sections of Elmore Road were closed briefly Monday morning after trucks blocked traffic due to icy conditions, according to an Anchorage police spokesman. Citing hazardous weather conditions and lingering power outages, Mat-Su district officials closed schools in the Susitna Valley on Monday. Road crews were contending with "extremely slick" conditions around the region after 2 1/2 days of high wind and heavy rain followed by Monday's temperature drop and coating of snow, said Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities spokesperson Shannon McCarthy. "Crews worked all weekend with thaw trucks and pot hole patching to keep roads drivable and had to switch back over to sanders in record time," McCarthy said. The forecast is calling for potentially subzero temperatures Wednesday night into Thursday morning, replacing the past few weeks of unusually balmy readings. Warmth, a major windstorm and rain eroded the official snowpack from 8 inches around the December holidays to nothing at all by Sunday. "It went to zero for maybe 12 hours there," said Anchorage-based National Weather Service meteorologist Tracen Knopp. "With this snow band that came over us this morning — they're actually out there measuring it right now, but we got I would estimate maybe a quarter inch of snow." Several inches of snow was reported in other parts of the city, he said. Until the latest storm system arrived, a series of atmospheric rivers deluged the region, melting most accumulation at lower elevations and coating the mountains with heavy, wet snow that triggered a number of large avalanches. At Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, a cornice on a ridge above Glacier Bowl gave way Sunday afternoon, sending a massive slide all the way down to the Main Street run, according to Duane Stutzman, Alyeska's mountain general manager. There were no reports of anyone caught in the slide, Stutzman said Monday morning, adding crews plan to do one more search of the debris pile, then spend the day on avalanche mitigation and regrooming the debris path. "We had only one guest up there. He happened to be the reporting party. Talk about luck," he said. The other lucky element of a non-injury avalanche within the boundaries of a ski area: "It brought down a lot of good snow that we can displace into the right areas," Stutzman said. A large slide shut down traffic on the Parks Highway on and off since Friday, when an avalanche blocked both lanes of traffic north of Cantwell. The highway was closed again Sunday evening but reopened Monday with pilot car operations in place to escort the public through the area, according to the state's 511 highway information site. Hatcher Pass Road in the Talkeetna Mountains near Palmer remains closed due to avalanches and avalanche danger just past Skeetawk Ski Area until at least Tuesday, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Days of unseasonal rain cratered roads around the region with tire-blowing potholes. The Alaska Zoo reported bears Oreo and Izzy lumbered out of their dens at least briefly over the weekend. The National Weather Service registered a high of 46 degrees at its offices near Anchorage's airport on Sunday, tying a record set in 2014. The most recent storm came on the heels of historic winds and warmth that battered Anchorage and the region this month, leaving some without power for days. By last week, parts of the Deep South, including Mississippi and Louisiana, saw more snow on the ground than Anchorage's diminished pack could muster. [Hey, New Orleans, please send some of your snow to Anchorage] A new weather system bringing cold air is pushing the warmer, moist air to the east, Knopp said Monday. "A low-pressure system with an Arctic air mass is wrapping around this low-pressure system and bringing cold air over Southcentral Alaska," he said. "Cooler air is flowing in, and we'll just see a gradual temperature change over the next few days."
