More than eight years after 19-year-old Kake resident Jade Williams was killed at a party, a man has been sentenced for causing her death.
On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Marianna Carpeneti sentenced 33-year-old Isaac Friday to 20 years in prison for manslaughter. Friday has already spent several years in prison since his 2019 arrest. The judge suspended the remaining years of the sentence.
Instead of serving more time in prison, Friday will be on probation for seven years, and if he violates his probation, he will face the remaining prison time.
Williams was found dead on August 15, 2017 at a party in her family’s house in Kake, according to court documents. Investigators from Juneau didn’t reach the scene until the next afternoon. Williams and Friday, who was 24 years old at the time, had been in a relationship, and the case was tried as a domestic violence case.
Friday was first indicted in 2019 on four charges: two murder charges, a manslaughter charge, and a criminally negligent homicide charge. As part of a plea deal, Friday pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge in February 2025. All other charges have since been dropped.
Jeremy Williams, Jade’s father, said at the sentencing hearing that his life hasn’t been the same since his daughter was killed.
“I had one job — I failed — that was to protect her,” he said. “It eats at me every day.”
Williams said he believes the sentence is just a slap on the wrist, and that his family’s experience throughout the investigation and criminal proceedings has been traumatizing.
“I really don’t know what to make of this,” he said. “It’s been a nightmare”
He said Jade had plans to go to cosmetology school in Washington, and that seeing other kids graduate and go to college makes him feel her loss, even eight years later.
But Williams said he hopes this sentencing means Jade’s family can begin to move forward.
“I hope myself, my family, my friends, his family — we could start to heal,” Williams said.
Friday’s defense attorney Eric Hedland said at the hearing he believes it’s possible that his client didn’t kill Williams. He pointed to another man at the party, who Hedland said admitted that he had been in a fight with Jade that night and had injuries consistent with an altercation. Hedland said DNA evidence that came out years after Friday’s indictment pointed to that other man. The state never filed charges against that person in connection with Williams’ death.
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t think anybody does. I don’t think the state does,” he said. “And that troubles me.”
Friday himself took the chance to speak during the sentencing Wednesday, and said he wants to be able to serve his community again.
“I’m ready to start giving back instead of taking,” he said. “I’m ready to help someone else rather than sitting in a room taking.”
Before delivering the sentence, Carpeneti said she also thinks the facts of the case remain muddled.
“None of us will ever know with a lot of clarity every event that transpired that evening and all of the harm that was done to different people,” she said.
Carpeneti said she knows the legal system can’t fix the pain Williams’ death has caused.
“There is not a sentence in the world that will restore Mr. Williams, his family, Jade’s friends and the community of Kake,” she said.
But, she said, the court’s responsibility in a plea agreement is to find an outcome that both parties — the state and the defense — will accept. Friday’s sentence, which both parties agreed to, achieves that.
