DOJ Silent as Civil Rights Leaders & Congress Demand Answers on Mysterious Death

0:00Popok:Welcome to a special edition of Legal AF. The death of Nolan Wells, a teenager in Mississippi, is not over. And trying to solve what happened to him cannot be over. Not in this society, not today, and not because a local prosecutor wants it to be over because there was no true bill of indictment returned by 23 people in Mississippi. What about the justice for the family? What about a dignified process? What about a prosecutor who seems to be more concerned about her own electoral fortunes than actually helping the families obtain some measure, some modicum of relief to know what happened to their son on that island?

0:45Popok:How did he end up drowning when everybody else got back safely that 4th of July? And so I wasn't surprised when the NAACP stepped forward to join civil rights attorneys like Ben Crump to represent the family and to demand a proper investigation that all leads be followed, not just criminal ones, but even just to solve this so it's not a cold case. We can't allow Nolan Wells to be a cold case. I want to bring in Kristen Clark, the NAACP's general counsel, who was with the family at a major press conference after the no true bill was returned. And apparently the prosecutor can't wait to close the door, close the book and be done with the case.

1:30Popok:Kristen, welcome to Legal AF. Thanks for having me. You made a very strong point at the press conference about this prosecutor. Is her job done? Her job is not done. Her job is not done. There is still more work to be done. There's still hard questions that need to be asked. There are still witnesses who need to be pressed to help this family get the answers they deserve. Um, I, uh, spent a lot of time with Nolan Wells' mother and father, and, um, they are grieving. This is still incredibly raw. Um, and there is only one victim here as Nolan's mother rightly observed her, her son, uh, Her son should be alive today.

2:24And nobody, nobody has been able to put forth anything that makes sense or anything that sounds rational or anything that can explain why her son is not here today. There's been a lot of focus or there needs to be more focus on the blunt force trauma to the back of Nolan Wells' head. There was a 12 by 8 inch area where there is confirmed blood. There is evidence of blunt force trauma to both the head and the back of the head and his back. And there needs to be some explanation as to how he got those injuries and something that fills in the gaps and explains what correlation those injuries have to his death.

3:23Yeah.

3:26Popok:Before she put out her self-serving video, did the prosecutor, Angela Myers McElrath, did she meet with you or the family? No. I mean, in these kinds of cases, as a former prosecutor, you owe a duty to properly give notification to the family, to the immediate family and the loved ones. And it is startling that here, all that Nolan's family received was the courtesy of a text message before the DA issued this Facebook statement that literally went viral within minutes. She received a text message, maybe two minutes before the Facebook statement was published. As a former prosecutor, to me, that is not adhering.

4:30It is not meeting your obligations to really, you know, respect the rights of victims and family members, particularly here where you have the death, the death of a teenager.

4:48Popok:You have a young black man, teenager, dying in Mississippi, and you have a prosecutor who seems, and I'm going to show a clip here in a minute, to only care about attacking the lawyers, by extension you, Ben Crump, attacking the family by extension, and just trying to wash your hands of, as you put it and the family put it, they're the victim and the victim's family. and hoping this closes the door. In fact, let me play a clip of the prosecutor so people can get a taste of what we're talking about. Let's play that clip. After a thorough and exhaustive investigation, your grand jury met last week concerning the death investigation of Nolan Wells and unanimously returned a no-true bill.

5:34Popok:The narrative that three white boys and a black boy went to an island and only three white friends returned spread like wildfire. This was false. Nolan went to Horn Island on July 4, 2026 with a large group of friends, and while on the island, he connected with even more friends. There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan's disappearance and death were racially motivated. Nolan's friends loved Nolan, and Nolan loved them. Nolan chose to stay on the island that day, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to contradict that. The family, the Crump team, and anyone close to Nolan knew that his disappearance and death were not the result of racial hate or violence.

6:23Popok:So let me ask it this way for people that don't know your background, former head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. If you were, what should, let's do it this way. What should the federal government, that was what the state did, a local prosecutor with a local grand jury on state claims, state charges. What should the federal government and the Department of Justice, from Civil Rights Division to local federal prosecutors, assistant U.S. attorneys, U.S. attorneys, and the rest? We'll start with that. What should they be doing in a best practice world of how to handle a case involving anyone but in the case of Nolan Wells?

7:08Yeah. Well, often local and state law enforcement are going to be your first responders. And where necessary, the federal government steps in to provide support to those first responders, support in terms of expertise and resources. And it was interesting here, the grand jury report indicated that the federal government indeed played a role in the investigation. I don't think there's much clarity about what that role looked like, how deeply involved or not involved was the Justice Department. But that's what would happen. You'd provide resources and expertise as needed. Now we are at a place where I think we want disclosure of the full investigative file and full transparency about this investigation and what it looked like.

8:12More transparency about what role the FBI in particular played here. But at the end of the day, you know, this is a family that deserves answers. And the NAACP and our members are really galvanized around Nolan's tragic death. And we stand with the family in the call for transparency and the call for the DA to continue the investigation and for the Justice Department to open an independent examination here. Horn Island is a federal barrier reef island. It is maintained in part by the National Park Service. And from where I sit, that provides a very legitimate basis for the federal government to continue to commit resources here.

9:09They have already been doing so and have all the more reason to commit more resources into a full, fair and independent investigation. One of the things we've been talking about on Legal AF, and I joined Don Lemon for the coverage of your press conference in particular, is this the time for calls to go out for the governor to appoint an independent

9:36Popok:special prosecutor, not named Angela Myers McElrath, to take on the case and the Mississippi Attorney General to do the same? I mean, how confident are you in the presentation of the case to the grand jury? I mean, I've seen her talk about, you know, there were 40 witnesses and there was emails and text messages and even some things supplied by the family. And how confident are you that that process was done appropriately? Yeah, I think it's hard to have a lot of confidence in the outcome, particularly without knowing more. And it's why the family is calling for a release of the full investigative file and more transparency here.

10:23You know, at the end of the day, this family will not rest until they know what happened to their son. And we need to do more in these instances where there are these tragic deaths, these unexplained, all of the unexplained circumstances, all of the people. In these kinds of situations, we need to press forward. No matter how challenging, no matter how difficult, really press forward to figure out what happened here. I've worked on many cases where the trail feels cold and you feel like you've done all that you can do. and then you press forward and you get a break. You get that one witness who flips.

11:10You get that one witness who had a change of heart. You get that one witness who feels like, all right, the temperature level has come down. And my hope is that someone in this community will understand that this family is not going away, not backing down, that there is a team of lawyers and the nation's largest civil rights membership organization. We're not going away and we're not going to sit down and accept, you know, what the DA has presented here, which is an incomplete story. So someone out there has information that could, you know, yield a break that really changes the course and trajectory of this case.

12:02Popok:Have you gotten straight answers as to the competing autopsies? You have the one, the family commission by Dr. Roger Mitchell that shows the blunt force trauma in that range back and head of the victim. And then you have the other, the county, Jackson County one, that was like, oh, indeterminate death, drowning. So there is a major gap between this. How did the Mississippi official examiner, how did he account for the wounds and trauma points on Nolan Wells' back and head? Yeah, we don't know. Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning you have to rule out every other possibility. And so it is hard to figure out how we get from A to Z here, particularly where the autopsy also revealed that there was no water in Nolan's lungs.

13:05So there's a big gap here, and it is why we keep stating the obvious. All of this leaves us with more questions, more questions and answers, more questions than we had at the outset. And it's, you know, again, why the family is not willing to rest.

13:25Popok:And to hear the prosecutor say out loud, he just decided to stay on Horn Island. Really? What was his plan to get home? He was going to swim. There's no Uber water taxi. How is he going to get home? So that whole theory, you know, and then drowning. Sure, you can drown. If I get hit in the back of the head in the back with an oar and I end up in the water, incapacitated or unconscious, sure, I could drown except for the things that you pointed out about missing water in the lungs and things. So what are the next steps? I mean, does the House, does Capitol Hill have a role here to play also to spotlight the issues and hold hearings?

14:12Yeah. Well, the Congressional Black Caucus has issued a call for the Justice Department to open an investigation. And I do think that we should, at the appropriate time, take a step back and think about the resources that we commit to murder cases and death cases, death cases involving young Black men. There is federal data that reveals that too many of the unsolved cases involving deaths of people in our country involve young black men. And why is that? I bring that up just to say that the DA's job is not yet done, that we need to press forward and commit more resources, more time, more energy to giving the family the answers they deserve.

15:16Popok:Why isn't she meeting with you and the family and Ben? No, it sounds like this video was intended to be the last word. but this is not over. We at the NAACP stand firmly with Attorney Ben Crump and the full legal team and most importantly, this family in the tough road that lies ahead. We're going to continue to press. We're going to continue to talk to individuals in the community and look for evidence wherever it might be buried. We urge the public to continue to bring information forward. So it is not over. Yeah. And let me show a clip so that people can understand what we're talking about, about the family, the humanity of it.

16:06Popok:Let me play a clip of the family at the press conference. Last night at 7.54 p.m., I received a text message from the DA informing Elmore and I that the grand jury report had been filed earlier in the day. Shortly after this text message, she released the information via Facebook. To me, that action showed a lack of empathy and a need to get this case done and over with. And this is someone who has told us repeatedly her story of losing her child,

17:02who she had eight months with and unfortunately knew and understood her child's diagnosis. We did not have that. Elmore and I have read through the report page by page more than once. What we have learned is that we still have no answers. and the report reinforced the fact that Nolan was not given a thorough, transparent, and honest investigation.

17:31Popok:It's interesting. One of the things that I'm picking up is, it's weird, but you might be thinking the more pressure and the more heat that's placed right now on this issue, the less likely some people may be to come forward, right? Yeah. And you also need trained investigators, trained law enforcement officials who can go out and work this case up and really press witnesses to put forward all the detail, to not sit on anything for fear that you might implicate somebody you know. And to me, there is more of that kind of hard investigative work that still needs to be done here. From what you know now, subject to further development, who was the last person to see him alive and what was Nolan doing?

18:27Yeah, I don't know that we have all of the answers to those questions either. And it is rare that you have a death case like this where there are so many individuals involved, individuals who are present, individuals who interacted with Nolan Wells. And I hope that the folks out there who are listening who may have been with Nolan or have heard something from someone who was present on Horn Island, I hope that they have the courage to come forward and share the information that Nolan's family so rightly deserves.

19:10Popok:And if they have that information, we can put it in the notes and up on the screen. Is there a hotline, a tip line? Who do they reach out to? They can reach out to the Crump Law Firm hotline, and I know that we'll put that number up. Well, General Counsel of the NAACP, Kristen Clark, such a pleasure to have you on here to brief our audience about this very important story. I think we are relieved that the NAACP and Ben Crump and others are not going to let this be the last word in the Nolan Wells death matter, that you're not going anywhere. The organization is not going anywhere and neither is the family or Ben's team.

19:51Popok:And justice hopefully will be done. Listen, if it comes out, you and I have talked about this before, if it comes out that it really was some sort of accident, then it was an accident and the parents will take that to their grave. If it wasn't, and these unexplained issues with his body and blood force trauma, and how did he drown without water in his lungs, these are all questions. The fact that we're this late off of an indictment that didn't happen and you can't answer for me the question, who was the last person to have seen him and what was he doing? I mean, for me, that says it all. These are fundamental things.

20:27Popok:This place was teeming with people in a flotilla for the holidays in and around Horn Island. This isn't somebody that like fell off a ladder at their home and nobody knows what happened other than the ladder is down and so is the person. Yeah, it's almost inconceivable that somebody doesn't know more. Yeah. Thank you for being here. And there's other cases that we're following in collaboration with the NAACP, including around voting and mail-in balloting. I'd love to have you back on there as developments happen in those cases as well. I appreciate it. And I'll just note that Nolan didn't get to vote.

21:01This was going to be his first time voting. And his mother was really excited about that. And so one thing that people can do to lift up Nolan's memory, particularly our first-time voters and our young voters who may have registered for the first time, is make sure that you get out and make sure that your voice is heard this election season.

21:24Popok:That's a great tribute to Nolan Wells and his family. I remember being 18 and being very excited to go down with my dad and my mom to cast my first ballot, so I can imagine the pain that they're suffering just related to that issue. Thanks for being here. General Counsel for the NAACP, Kristen Clark here on Legal AF. Take a moment and help us continue to grow our Pro Democracy channel by hitting our free subscribe button.

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