The Mississippi district attorney leading the investigation into the mysterious death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells has not shown a level of care that his grieving family needs and expects. It’s coming across in the way the district attorney’s office — and other local officials — has managed communications with the family and the public.
Monday night, news broke of a Mississippi grand jury’s unanimous decision not to make any indictments in the case. Nolan, a rising college sophomore and athlete, went missing July 4 after traveling with friends on a private boat to Horn Island, a sandy barrier island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Nolan didn’t make it home that evening. His mother, Christine Wells-Wonsley, reported him missing. A U.S. park ranger found his body on the island’s shore on July 6. That day, Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter told media outlets, “No foul play has been identified.”
Since then, there’s been little to no information coming from officials about the death investigation. The official autopsy, conducted by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, was withheld until reviewed by a grand jury.
Monday night, just before 8 p.m. central, Jackson County District Attorney (DA) Angel Myers Mcllrath released the Grand Jury Report, filed three days earlier on Sept. 18. Typically, governmental bodies drop important updates at times of the day when they’ll grab the most media attention — between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. to catch the morning news cycles, or in the early afternoon for primetime TV news, or early evening to make sure the headline makes it into the newspaper before the layout is confirmed for print.
Why would the Mississippi DA drop the grand jury’s decision so late in the evening?
At a Tuesday morning press conference, Wells-Wonsley said she learned about the Grand Jury Report through a text message from the DA moments before it was released to the DA Office’s Facebook page.
“To me, that action showed a lack of empathy, and a need to get this case done and over with,” Wells-Wonsley said. Her husband Elmore Wonsley and civil rights Attorney Ben Crump stood by her side.
Let’s unpack what’s in the report.
The grand jury found that Nolan’s death was “consistent with drowning.” Although, on page 4 of the report, it is stated that “drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion.”
In late July, Nolan’s parents traveled to Chicago, the home of Emmett Till, to tell Black America that the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, who conducted the first autopsy, did not send all of Nolan’s pertinent body parts of the independent autopsy. On page 4 of the Grand Jury Report, it’s stated that the family-retained forensic pathologist was later given full access to examine Nolan’s internal neck structures.
Also on page 4, the grand jury wrote that a witness testified that Nolan slipped awkwardly off the side of a boat that day, but could not say whether Nolan hit his head. In July, Dr. Roger A. Mitchell, a Washington, D.C.-based board-certified forensic pathologist, told the 117th NAACP National Convention in Chicago that he found “a 12 x 8-inch focal area of red discoloration in the deep soft tissues” on the back of Nolan’s head and additional injuries to other areas of his body.
In a Tuesday press release, Crump accused the Mississippi DA of “attempting to close the chapter on Wells’ death without getting to the bottom of what caused the blunt force trauma to the back of his head and body.”
It’s important to note that both the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office and the family-retained pathologist “opined that the cause and manner of Mr. Wells’ death is undetermined.” It is still unclear what happened to Nolan on July 4.
Because the grand jury did not find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, however, no indictments were made in Nolan’s death. This is what Nolan’s family, and everyone fighting for justice in his case, has feared.
“As Dr. Mitchell stated in his report, the cause and manner of death is undetermined, and the investigation should remain open and active until we get to the truth,” Crump said at Tuesday’s press conference.
Rev. Al Sharpton, a renowned civil rights leader, also shared his thoughts about the grand jury’s decision.
“We will not confuse the absence of an indictment with the presence of an answer,” Sharpton’s statement read. He added that he disagrees with the grand jury’s conclusion. “Mississippi’s history painfully teaches us exactly why families should never be expected to simply accept unanswered questions surrounding the death of a young Black person.”
Sharpton referenced the crusade for justice for 14-year-old Till, who was abducted and brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi, in 1955, and assassinated Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers. It took 31 years to convict Evers’ murderer, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, who was tried twice in 1964, but all-white juries deadlocked each time.
As Nolan’s family continues to push for answers, here’s something to think about. Why did the Mississippi DA wait until just about 8:00 PM on a Monday night to share the grand jury’s decision, when they could have dropped the report at a time that better fits with the newscycle, like Monday or Tuesday morning?
It’s important to take note of not only what information is released by a governmental body but also the manner in which that information is released. Unfortunately, the decisions of the Mississippi DA continue to breed mistrust.
