VERNAL — A lawsuit filed by the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation against the United States has new life after a federal judge recently reinstated the case for review by a lower court.

The ruling says there needs to be further examination of federal officers' role in the aftermath of a tribe member's fatal encounter with police nearly 10 years ago.

The Ute Indian Tribe has filed multiple lawsuits against state and federal parties since the shooting death of 21-year-old Todd Rory Murray on April 1, 2007, alleging multiple wrongdoings by law enforcement during and after the incident.

Murray and then-Vernal police officer Vance Norton — now the Uintah County sheriff — exchanged fire during the ordeal. But Murray's death was ruled a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in a decision handed down Jan. 27, vacated a lower court's decision to dismiss the tribe's lawsuit that alleges violations of an 1868 treaty between the tribe and the United States. The decision stated that the role of federal officers was not properly considered in the lower court's decision to dismiss.

For several years, the Ute Indian Tribe has made various claims in court that police inappropriately pursued Murray, who was a passenger in a fleeing car shortly before the shootout, and went past their lawful jurisdiction and into tribal territory.

The Ute Indian Tribe has also claimed that investigators ignored, destroyed or improperly handled evidence that would have shown Murray's death was a homicide.

A separate Ute Indian Tribe lawsuit against the state of Utah, Uintah County, Vernal and 11 state law enforcement officers was struck down by a different federal appeals court in December 2015. That court agreed with an earlier ruling that there was no legitimate dispute about Murray's death being a suicide and that officers were lawful in their pursuit of him.

But the lawsuit against the United States alleging a treaty violation still needs more review, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled late last month, because allegations about federal officers' culpability in mishandling evidence have not been properly reviewed.

"The (lower) court explained that the local officers could not be liable for several alleged acts (evidence mishandling) because the duty to preserve the evidence was not on them, but on the … federal officers," the recent ruling states.

The court explained that there remains an unexplored question as to whether assisting federal investigators erred in their handling of the gun found near Murray's body and their supervision of the site where he died.

"But for the destruction of the cited evidence, (the plaintiff) may have shown that Murray was, in fact, shot" and hit by Norton during the gunfight, the written ruling states.

The court clarified that it did not have a position on whether a conclusion of homicide would be reached if evidence could have been more thoroughly collected. But either way, if federal officers are found culpable of mishandling such evidence, it's possible the lawsuit's claims of a treaty violation would have merit, the court said.

"The culpability of the federal officers for (spoiling evidence) has never been decided," the ruling states.

The Ute Indian Tribe is alleging that the handling of the investigation violates the "bad man" clause of its 1868 treaty with the United States. Relatives of Murray are also named as plaintiffs in the tribe's lawsuit.