GRAND JURY DELIVERS NOLAN WELLS CASE VERDICT

A Jackson County grand jury came to a decision in the death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, who vanished during a July 4 boat trip to Horn Island and was found dead two days later. Twenty-three jurors, 132 subpoenas, 43 witnesses, phone forensics, GPS logs, security footage. The unanimous result was a no true bill. No charges, and no answer either. The state's chief medical examiner and the pathologist the family hired both landed on the same word: undetermined. The report says accidental drowning still fits and was never ruled out. Then the grownups started swinging. DA Angel Myers McIlrath used a 15-minute Facebook video to say there is not a scintilla of evidence the death was racially motivated, and that the Crump team "knew better but did not do better." Crump answered that two pathologists documented blunt force injuries to the back of Nolan's head and his back, and nobody has explained where they came from. Pick your outlet and you get a different story. Right-leaning coverage ran with the DA's beatdown of Crump and the witness who testified Wells slipped awkwardly off a boat and kept socializing. Left-leaning coverage ran with the race question the DA says was never there.

Why you should give a shit: A no true bill means nobody gets charged, not that anybody knows what happened, and since Mississippi has no statute of limitations on homicide, arguments and investigations are sure to be on going.