Justice for Nolan Wells May Be Slipping Away!
Updated: 15 minutes ago
By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted on September 25, 2026
Yesterday, I read the September 18, 2026, grand jury report on the death of Nolan Wells. As a former state prosecutor in homicide cases from murder to manslaughter and as a retired criminal defense attorney who holds a string of unbroken national litigation records, I viewed the report from the lens of what it takes for the Wells family to get justice in this case.
I also hold the national record for solving the greatest number of law enforcement coverups in high-profile murder cases. This record started with what the April 3, 1977, edition of the Washington Post called “Alabama’s Watergate” and ended with my series of published articles in 2015 that solved the “Murder of Army Private Lavena Johnson" by her TRADOC Commander on a U.S. military base in Balad, Iraq in July 2005.
Criminal Justice for Black Homicide Victims in Mississippi Has Always Been Challenging in Cases Where the Suspected Perpetrators are White
Mississippi is a difficult place to obtain justice for black homicide victims, especially when the suspected perpetrators are well-connected local whites. We learned this valuable lesson with Emmett Till's murder case in 1955 and affirmed it with Medgar Evers' murder case in 1963.
In Mississippi, the white power structure has never valued the lives of its black citizens. The same is true in Alabama and other Deep South states.
Within this historical context, the pursuit of criminal justice for a black homicide victim in Mississippi where the perpetrators are likely well-connected whites must be strategic, relentless, and fought inside a courtroom.
The grand jury in Nolan Wells case had 23 members, of whom 12 were white and 11 were citizens of color. There were five blacks on the panel, which makes it hard for the Wells family to claim racial bias in the grand jury review.
The decision to return no indictments in the case was unanimous -- meaning 11 jurors of color concurred with 12 white jurors in the decision to NOT charge anyone with a crime in connection with Nolan Wells’ death.
Angel Myers McIlrath, who has been a state prosecutor for 20 years and the Jackson County District Attorney for 7 years, did a great job in controlling the grand jury review process, in framing the narrative to achieve a predetermined outcome, and in writing a detailed grand jury report that supported her version of the “truth.”
I could tell from the report that McIIrath had plenty of experience in handling grand jury matters and in trying criminal cases. The report was a PR masterpiece. It left very little wiggling room for the Wells family to get justice in this case.
Wells died on July 4th. An April 2026 grand jury was reconvened on September 14th to hear evidence in the case. The grand jury report was issued on September 18th.
In Places Like Mississippi, the Families of Putative Black Crime Victims Must Be Very Proactive in Legal Proceedings
The Wells family initiated no ligation in the case against any suspected wrongdoer between July 4th and the time McIllrath reconvened her grand jury on September 14th to review the case. Without litigation, the Wells were outsiders in the law enforcement investigatory process. They had no seat at the table.
This left McIIrath free to run the criminal investigation and grand jury proceedings as she saw fit. McIIrath had plenty of time, opportunities, and discretion to guide the evidentiary presentation toward her desired outcome.
McIIrath did not care about the litany of Wells family press conferences. Those were external events that impacted nothing inside of her grand jury room.
From the beginning, the Wells family should have fought hard to remove McIIrath as the prosecutor in the case. I would have fought like hell to have the court appoint a special prosecutor acceptable to the Wells family to handle the DA's investigation, the grand jury review, and any possible indictments.
In a place like Jackson County, Mississippi (population 147,666), a seasoned litigator can always find one or two legitimate conflicts of interest that would have mandated Mcllrath's recusal and supported the family’s request for a court-appointed special prosecutor. That motion should have been filed within 5-7 days of Wells’ death.
In the absence of a recusal motion, Mcllrath proactively addressed the relationships of all parties, investigators, and prosecutors inside the grand jury room and the grand jury found (at page 2) there were "no conflicts of interest." This slick move amounted to an unchallenged self-certification of "no conflicts of interest" by the chief prosecutor in a grand jury room she controlled, rather than an independent inquiry and third-party presentation of "no conflicts of interest" in a contested court proceeding.
Between July 4th and September 14th, there were about five other strategic legal maneuvers that would have gotten the Wells family a permanent seat inside of the DA’s investigation. It does not appear from the grand jury report that any of these maneuvers occurred. Without them, McIIrath had the clear advantage in shaping the narrative inside the grand jury room and spinning it outside the courthouse.
Now, McIIrath’s narrative has been ratified by all 23 grand jurors. Absent a showing by clear and convincing evidence in a subsequent grand jury or court proceeding that these 23 jurors got it wrong, their review of the evidence will likely stand.
Despite everything that has happened in this case to date, the Wells family must NOT ask the Trump Department of Justice to conduct any kind of separate grand jury review of this case. That will only make it harder to get to the truth in this case.
Trump’s DOJ attorneys are coverup specialists. They have NEVER liberated the truth in any case where the victim was a person of color. What is more, the grand jury report (at page 6) affirms that federal investigators participated in Mcllrath's criminal investigation.
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